Invisible wrote:

> However, one might also conjecture that the probability of any two 
> arbitrary messages having the same [MD5] hash code would be 2^(-128).

Actually, according to the Birthday Paradox, the probability in this 
case is much lower.

All I *really* want to know is the probability of a random alteration to 
a file going undetected by an MD5 hash comparison. But this depends on 
just how "random" MD5 really is. Apparently it's not something anybody 
has looked at much. The existence of a collision algorithm seems to 
suggest that it's not all that random, but I don't know...

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