Question

What are the strengths and weakness for Message Digest (MD5) and RIPEMD-128?

Answer 1

The Message-Digest algorithm 5 is a cryptographic hashing algorithm which takes input as a message of any length and returns output of a fixed-length digest value to be used for authenticating the original message.

It verifies that a file has been unaltered

MD5 was the first (and, at that time, believed secure) efficient hash function with a public, readable specification.

Strengths:

• It utilizes resources better.
• Faster implementation
• less Complex and less CPU intensive than other cryptographic algorithms.

Weaknesses:

• Preimage attacks: It is prone to a hash collision weakness which allows attackers to create same MD5 output fingerprint even for multiple input sources.
• No longer considered cryptographically secure and can not be used in applications requiring security.

RIPMED -  RACE Integrity Primitives Evaluation Message Digest. It is based upon the design principles used in Message-Digest algorithm 4.

RIPEMD-128 is an iterative hash function that operates on 32-bit words.

Strenghts:

1)It is considered secure as it fulfills the criteria of strong hash function.

i. to find a message that corresponds to a given message digest.

ii. to find two different messages that produce the same message digest.

2) can be used for applications where longer hash result is necessary.

3) performs better in terms of frequency and throughput.

Weakness

1) It is weakly designed as 128-bit result is too small which may lead to compromised security.

2) possibility of collision attack in future.