md5 security looks to be compromised, how much of a security threat does this impose?

Question

So I have been hearing that md5 has been compromised, how much of a security threat does this impose? if it is something that poses a large concern is it possible to change the encryption method from md5 to crypt? or another method that is not compromised?

Comments

MD5 is not used for encryption. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5 for further details and for what md5 actually is.

Answer 1

MD5 is a message digest / hash. It is an earlier effort by Ron Rivest. It was paired with Ron's rc5 streaming encryption cipher, but lived by itself as one of the major hash functions in 90s (md5, md160 (do I have that right :) ), and sha1). All have been weakened to different levels. md5 has real attacks where with crafted change to a message you can still get the same hash value.

Today you might STILL use sha1; it has had tremendous resiliency. NIST was expecting it to fall as badly as md5 by this point. Most use at least sha256, and sha3 is now out there. Choose your poison.

data confidentiality is another subject. Hope this helps.

Comments

sha3 isn't really ready yet (unless something changed within the last  couple of months). The algorithm was chosen a while ago, but there are parameters that need to be chosen and as yet there isn't a standard sha3.