- A widely used hash function that produces a 128-bit hash value. Although MD5 was initially designed to be used as a cryptographic hash function, it has been found to suffer from extensive vulnerabilities. It can still be used as a checksum to verify data integrity, but only against unintentional corruption. It remains suitable for other non-cryptographic purposes, for example for determining the partition for a particular key in a partitioned database. MD5 was designed in 1991 by Ronald Rivest to replace the earlier hash function MD4, and was specified in 1992 as RFC 1321. ← Wikipedia
- Related terms: MD4, Number sign, Hash function, Hash table
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