Comments on: What is SHA-1 and MD-5 encryption? http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/encryption/ Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:11:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Labnuke99 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/encryption/#comment-51583 Labnuke99 Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:17:06 +0000 #comment-51583 Both are message authentication hash algorithms. This means that they are one-way and you cannot derive the original message from the hash produced by the algorithm. SHA1 - The US Secure Hash Algorithm takes a message of less than 264 bits in length and produces a 160-bit message digest designed so that it is computationally very expensive to find a text string that matches a given hash. MD5 - Message Digest 5 is a standard algorithm that takes as input a message of arbitrary length and produces as output a 128-bit fingerprint or message digest of the input. Any modifications made to the message in transit can then be detected by recalculating the digest. Similar in concept to a CRC, the MD5 algorithm is used as part of the SNMPv3 security subsystem Please also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC-SHA1 Both are message authentication hash algorithms. This means that they are one-way and you cannot derive the original message from the hash produced by the algorithm.

SHA1 - The US Secure Hash Algorithm takes a message of less than 264 bits in length and produces a 160-bit message digest designed so that it is computationally very expensive to find a text string that matches a given hash.

MD5 - Message Digest 5 is a standard algorithm that takes as input a message of arbitrary length and produces as output a 128-bit fingerprint or message digest of the input. Any modifications made to the message in transit can then be detected by recalculating the digest. Similar in concept to a CRC, the MD5 algorithm is used as part of the SNMPv3 security subsystem

Please also see:
 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC-SHA1" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC-SHA1" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC-SHA1</a>

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