MD4
- Date
- 1990 · confidence high
- Place
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Ronald Rivest
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A 128-bit cryptographic hash function developed by Ronald Rivest at MIT, the ancestor of MD5, SHA-1 and RIPEMD. Its security was severely compromised from the mid-1990s, with collisions now generable in a fraction of a second.
Developed by Ronald Rivest in 1990; the first full collision attack was published in 1995.
What it led to
- the design of MD5, SHA-1 and RIPEMD as successors
- use in the ed2k file-identification scheme of eDonkey2000/eMule
- gradual abandonment after the first collision attacks in 1995