On Mon, Oct 23, 2000 at 11:49:38PM -0700, der.hans wrote:
> Am 23. Oct, 2000 schwäzte Kevin Buettner so:
>
> > - the /dev/random driver appears to be already doing something
> > roughly equivalent to an md5sum. In fact, random.c contains the
> > core of the MD5 algorithm. However, it is not being used.
> > In its place, something called a SHA hash is used on the entropy
> > pool to generate random numbers. If you prefer to use the MD5
> > code, you can comment out the USE_SHA define. I imagine that
> > there's a good reason for using the SHA hash instead of MD5;
>
> Went to an intrusion detection presentation at AZSAGE last week. The
> presentor said that SHA and MD5 are the two formats allowed by the courts,
> e.g. if you encrypt with something else they won't allow the evidence. She
> said there was a way to break MD5 in a matter of minutes, so SHA appears
> to be the way to go.
>
> I don't know enough to say whether or not she was right...
>
I don't know the specifics of the attack against MD5, but most people
do seem to think that SHA is much stronger.
> ciao,
>
> der.hans
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