Re:Ask HN: Is there a string which MD5 Sum is all 0xffffffff...
by hospitalhusband on Sunday April 23, 2023 @12:06PM
(#35677423)
There's an infinite number of those strings, but barring an edge case in the md5 algorithm, none are known.
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Re:Ask HN: Is there a string which MD5 Sum is all 0xffffffff...
by dzek69 on Sunday April 23, 2023 @05:13PM
(#35680688)
Is the algorithm known to produce all theoretically possible hash values?
Imagine a simple algorithm that should hash a string to a number 0-3, but due to an extra condition it actually cannot produce "3", pseudocode:
``` Sum = sumOfAsciiCodeOfString(input); Rest = Sum % 4; Return Rest === 3 ? 2 : Rest; ```
Or due to a bug (replace `% 4` with `% 3`).
Can we prove that md5 doesn't suffer from such issues and it actually can output ffffffffffff or deaddeaddeaddead ?