when hashes collide – about time we found a use for PS3s
January 1st, 2009
200 Sony PS3s Harnessed To Crack Secure Site Certification (InformationWeek)
“Our attack takes advantage of a weakness in the MD5 cryptographic hash function that allows the construction of different messages with the same MD5 hash,” theresearchers said on their Web site. “This is known as an MD5 ‘collision.’ Previous work on MD5 collisions between 2004 and 2007 showed that the use of this hash function in digital signatures can lead to theoretical attack scenarios. Our current work proves that at least one attack scenario can be exploited in practice, thus exposing the security infrastructure of the Web to realistic threats.”
