RFC 1321 (rfc1321) - Page 2 of 21

The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm

RFC 1321              MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm            April 1992


   The MD5 algorithm is designed to be quite fast on 32-bit machines. In
   addition, the MD5 algorithm does not require any large substitution
   tables; the algorithm can be coded quite compactly.

   The MD5 algorithm is an extension of the MD4 message-digest algorithm
   1,2]. MD5 is slightly slower than MD4, but is more "conservative" in
   design. MD5 was designed because it was felt that MD4 was perhaps
   being adopted for use more quickly than justified by the existing
   critical review; because MD4 was designed to be exceptionally fast,
   it is "at the edge" in terms of risking successful cryptanalytic
   attack. MD5 backs off a bit, giving up a little in speed for a much
   greater likelihood of ultimate security. It incorporates some
   suggestions made by various reviewers, and contains additional
   optimizations. The MD5 algorithm is being placed in the public domain
   for review and possible adoption as a standard.

   For OSI-based applications, MD5's object identifier is

   md5 OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::=
     iso(1) member-body(2) US(840) rsadsi(113549) digestAlgorithm(2) 5}

   In the X.509 type AlgorithmIdentifier [3], the parameters for MD5
   should have type NULL.

2. Terminology and Notation

   In this document a "word" is a 32-bit quantity and a "byte" is an
   eight-bit quantity. A sequence of bits can be interpreted in a
   natural manner as a sequence of bytes, where each consecutive group
   of eight bits is interpreted as a byte with the high-order (most
   significant) bit of each byte listed first. Similarly, a sequence of
   bytes can be interpreted as a sequence of 32-bit words, where each
   consecutive group of four bytes is interpreted as a word with the
   low-order (least significant) byte given first.

   Let x_i denote "x sub i". If the subscript is an expression, we
   surround it in braces, as in x_{i+1}. Similarly, we use ^ for
   superscripts (exponentiation), so that x^i denotes x to the i-th
   power.

   Let the symbol "+" denote addition of words (i.e., modulo-2^32
   addition). Let X