What Does Message Digest 5 (MD5) Mean?
Message Digest 5 (MD5) is a hash function used in cryptography. Developed by Ronald Rivest in 1991, Message Digest 5 produces a 128-bit resulting hash value. Similar to other message-digest algorithms, it was largely developed for digital signature applications which make use of a large compressed file in a secure fashion.
Techopedia Explains Message Digest 5 (MD5)
Details of the Message Digest 5 algorithm are provided in RFC 1321. The algorithm of Message Digest 5 makes use of a message of any length and outputs a 128-bit message digest of the input. The Message Digest 5 algorithm does not need any large substitution tables and is an extension of the Message Digest 4 algorithm. Compared to Message Digest 4, Message Digest 5 is more conservative in design but is slower. The steps involved in the Message Digest 5 algorithm are appending of padding bits, appending representation of padded message to the original message, initialization of message digest buffer, processing of message in 16-word blocks and finally outputting the result. Compared to Message Digest 4, Message Digest 5 is slightly more complex.
