$10M breaks MD5 in 24 days

[Phil Karn]

>Well, I suppose this demonstrates that the NSA knew what they were
>doing when they set the SHA's length to 160 bits. Let it never be said
>that they aren't right on top of everything...

On the other hand, I can't imagine that NSA is unaware that strong
cryptographic hash functions designed for authentication are also
useful building blocks for a confidentiality cipher. Which might make
them less than wholly enthusiastic about doing their best on a public
standard like SHA.

Caveat emptor NSA. (John Cleese, if you're out there, feel free to
correct my Latin).

Phil