Re: Windows .PWL cracker implemented as a Word Basic virus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <95Dec10.175318edt.1732@cannon.ecf.toronto.edu>, SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N <sinclai@ecf.toronto.edu> wrote:
My understanding was that MD4 had been broken once, at the cost of much computer time.
Not *that* much computer time... In my copy of Hans Dobbertin's paper, the abstract says ``An implementation of our attack allows to find collisions for MD4 in less than a minute on a PC.'' As far as I know, the difficulty of inverting MD4 is still an open problem -- but why would you want to use a broken algorithm like MD4 when you can use MD2, MD5, or SHA? - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMMtrRCoZzwIn1bdtAQGQwQF+JlWjDgMCs+Y6nO/tUzrXcd9wJCrTLHx2 NlC+1bHspTvJSXSD29M73rfeyOfWOTtQ =4jl6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N <sinclai@ecf.toronto.edu> wrote:
My understanding was that MD4 had been broken once, at the cost of much computer time.
Not *that* much computer time... I stand corrected. I've not read the original paper.
As far as I know, the difficulty of inverting MD4 is still an open problem -- but why would you want to use a broken algorithm like MD4 when you can use MD2, MD5, or SHA? Granted. A brute force attack on MD4 takes 2^64 times more operations to invert it than it does to find matching pairs if I remember correctly. However a clever algorithm would reduce that.
Of course with MD5 as a plug-in replacement that's only 30% slower this isn't a big problem. Looks like the safety belts are worth while after all.
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daw＠quito.CS.Berkeley.EDU -
SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N