hashmd5brute-forceasic

Using an ASIC to brute force MD5


Is it possible to use an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) to brute force MD5 hashes and thus reverse them down to their original form? I know there could be multiple collisions, but leaving that aside, would it be possible? The idea interests me because I happen to have ASIC Miner Block Erupters which are ASIC's used to generate the SHA-256 hash, but why not MD5? Thanks in advance.


Solution

  • A brute force attack is futile as there are 2^128 MD5 hashes. If you could compute 10^18 (that's a billion times a billion) hashes per second it would still take billions of years to find a single collision (unless you are extraordinarily lucky). Terahashes per second is not nearly enough. 2^128 / 1 terahertz is in the order of 10^26 seconds, which is about 10^19 years.

    MD5 is broken, but broken does not imply "feasible to brute force", only "feasible to attack in some manner (probably more sophisticated than brute force)".