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Re: System integrity...



> On Wed, Jun 16, 1999 at 06:16:28PM +0100, Jules Bean wrote:
> > 
> > I'm currently unsubscribed to -policy - I should be resubscribing soon,
> > when my free time increases to that amount needed to follow policy.  So
> > apologies if this has been covered before...  
> > 
> > Doesn't an md5sums file need to have file lengths to work?  I
> > understoood that there were known algorithms to produce a new file with
> > a given md5sum, if you can vary the length of the file?
> 
> Not that I know of.  md5sums are considered cryptographically secure.
> Perhaps you are thinking of CRC checksums?

AFAIK, Jules is correct: MD5 sums are only cryptographically secure
(and there was a cryptic announcement by RSA which even throws that
into some doubt) if the correct length of the plaintext is also
known.

   Julian

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
        Debian GNU/Linux Developer,  see http://www.debian.org/~jdg


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