Re: [fw-wiz] strong passwords

From: miha@nil.si
Date: 07/09/02 

To: Barney Wolff <barney@tp.databus.com>
From: miha@nil.si
Date: Tue Jul  9 12:31:00 2002

Barney Wolff wrote:

>You're looking at the wrong number. The Birthday Paradox means that
>*if you have 2^64 things* you've got about a 50:50 chance of finding two
>that hash to the same value. But you still have to look at about
>2^127 things to find one with a hash equal to a desired one. You're
>much wiser to attack the password itself than MD5.

Now, I don't have my copy of Applied Cryptography ready, but isn't 50:50
chance much too high? If I remember correctly it is more in the lines of:
birthday attacks are possible, just not very likely, but finding something
that hashes to the same value as a specific text/password is next to
impossible ( very hard ).

Yes/No/Maybe? 

---
  Miha Vitorovic

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