Re: CISCO MD5 encryption

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader () gmail com>]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:29 PM, McCaulty x <mccaulty () gmail com> wrote:
> Please excuse my ignorance...why is it unsafe to use MD5 hashing?
One thing a hash is supposed to do is resist collisions. Folks are
engineering collisions on the hash. It no longer has pre-image
resistance. See, for example, MD5 considered harmful today [1] and MD5
Weakness Allows Fake SSL Certificates To Be Created [2].

Many projects use MD5 as the hashing algotihm. With current research
from folks like Lenstra, et al [1], do you feel confortable storing
digests of passwords using a broken hash? I know many free software
and open source projects do - they just don't get it.

Apparently Cisco does not get it either. Its amazing their gear can
pass a DHS audit for use in Federal agencies. My last audit by DHS
(December 2010) included a thorough search-and-destroy for SHA-1
(MD5's successor) since SHA-2 is now required for new systems.

Jeff

[1] http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/
[2] http://www.sslshopper.com/article-md5-weakness-allows-fake-ssl-certificates-to-be-created.html

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