On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:19:31 -0700, Adam Olsen wrote: > Actually, *cryptographic* hashes handle that just fine. Even for files > with just a 1 bit change the output is totally different. This is known > as the Avalanche Effect. Otherwise they'd be vulnerable to attacks. > > Which isn't to say you couldn't *construct* a pattern that it would be > vulnerable to. Figuring that out is pretty much the whole point of > attacking a cryptographic hash. MD5 has significant vulnerabilities by > now, and other will in the future. That's just a risk you need to > manage.
There are demonstrated methods for constructing MD5 collisions against an arbitrary file in about a minute on a laptop computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5 -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
