MD4 hash

2006-12-28T09:14:01Z

195.3.81.25:

An [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1320.html MD4] hash is a unique value given as a result of a mathematical expression following the [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1320.html MD4 algorithm] which claims to ensure data integrity.<br>
It provides a 128-bit (16 [[byte]]s, 32 hex chars) message digest from the data input (the input may be of any length) that is claimed to be unique.

[http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1320.html MD4] was developed by [http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest Professor Ronald L. Rivest] of [http://web.mit.edu MIT] and accepted by the [http://www.rsa.com RSA] on [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1186.html October 1990] and then redesigned on [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1320.html April 1992].

Both [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1320.html MD4] and its successor [http://userpages.umbc.edu/~mabzug1/cs/md5/md5.html MD5] (which is an extension of [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1320.html MD4]) are optimized for 32-bit machines, while its predecessor [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1319.html MD2] was optimized for 8-bit machines.

[http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1320.html MD4] is known to be fast, but possibly not absolutely secure. On the other hand, [http://userpages.umbc.edu/~mabzug1/cs/md5/md5.html MD5] is not as fast as the [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1320.html MD4] algorithm, but offers much more assurance of data security.

[[aMule]] incorporates the [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1320.html MD4] algorithm based on the [[libcrypto|Crypto++]]'s library sources (in some beta [[aMule]] v2 releases, it did actually use [[libcrypto|Crypto++]]).

NOTE : the hash used in ed2k protocol URLs in NOT MD4 !!!
It is similar but not the same. Above certain filesize (the exact value is documented somewhere) the MD4 and the ed2k hash for the same data are not the same. Anybody can check this by computing a hash of any file greater than 15 megabytes using any hash tool, like HashCalc, fsum etc.

AMule Project FAQ - User contributions [en]

MD4 hash