Re: Mcrypt: Blowfish or Twofish or no fish? Part 2

Yes Jimmy, you are correct. MD5 is a one-way hash. Its used for getting a unique fingerprint of some data (like files / passwords etc) so that it can be compared with another MD5 hash. Thats the point of a hashing algorithm like MD5 and SHA1 - you should never need to decrypt the data. Refer to how Digital signatures and PKI works - they use MD5 hashes. The next question - A bigger keylength means stronger encryption - but it also means more CPU cycles. A bigger blocksize means that bigger chunks of data are encrypted at a time. Its always a balance that needs to be found over here - you cant use a keylength that is 2048 bits - it will give u the strongest encryption, but it will also take a lot of time. Tx, Vinod. On Wed, 22 May 2002 Jimmy Lantz wrote :

Thanx for the suggestions! Someone mentioned that I could use MD5 and then encrypt the hash, how would I ever decrypt that? Is'nt MD5 a 1-way thing only? Another question? Should I go for bigger keylength or bigger blocksize or both? What makes for the best encryption? / Jim (and before someone suggest that I read the book Applied cryptography it's already orderd and on it's way :-) ) -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

_________________________________________________________ Click below to visit monsterindia.com and review jobs in India or Abroad http://monsterindia.rediff.com/jobs