MD5 idea/theory

this might sound stupid, but i'll say it. lets SUPPOSE , ok ? dont comme telling me there's more, again i say SUPPOSE the number of all possible MD5 hashes is 100 trillion possibilities (its not infinite). so let's say we get a 64 chars long string, with the same charset of the ** always 32 chars long** MD5 hash.. the possibilities will then be, considering my first supposition, 200 trillion.. so there ARE two strings that have the same MD5 hash right ? and if so, MD5 was made to create "fingerprints" for documents, and documents definately are over 32 chars long, even though the possibility is very low (if my idea is correct), it exists.. right ?

the main idea is that there are some strings that have the same MD5 hash..

the possible chances of you hitting a duplicate is one in 340 decillion.

if you want the numeral it is

1/340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

so I think if you DO find a duplicate you have way too much time on your hands AND way too much Hard Drive Space and should send some to me :P

well the bigger the string (document , letter , certified information) the bigger the possibility of finding a "duplicate"…. so my theory is true.. ?

It is. MD5 Hash collisions have been discovered quite some time ago.

Here`s a paper on it: http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/199.pdf

ah kl!! thx :)

Yup, it's possible and has been done. It doesn't necessarily mean you have a lot of extra time on your hands, but imagine that you could make it look like bill gates' will gave everything he owned to you :)

A better type of fingerprint should probably be alphanumeric instead of just hexidecimal, and probably more around 65 chars long… That would be nearly impossible to find a collision for with today's technology

they might be already working on one.. who knows :P i heard they were working on MD6 some months ago….

There have been rumours that they have for over a year now as far as I know… there are a lot of rumours about updating a lot of things though (such as IP address format)

Hum for the IP it's true because in a few there is going to be so much computer and server that they are going to miss adresse. I think the new format should be something like 0123:4567:890A:BCDE it's like 16 char in hexa. For the IP it isn't just a rumor some serious magazine about computer & stuff like that have begin to talk about it. For MD6 … I've never heard about it.

Yea, they already have the new versions developed… Just waiting for them to start implementing them which seems like it will never happen

Not never but I heard it will be near 2052 … witch is very far. In this time i will be retired. The date is an aproximation of the time when the old system (the one we are using) is going to be no more useless because to much comp or server.