This won't interest a lot of people, but today China has hinted they may have found a clash in MD5. This is the algorithm used to store our supposedly secure computer passwords. It is very important in the security field that no two different inputs ever produce the same output. When that happens, it is called a clash or collision. What it means is the most advanced password crypto system has been breached.
It also means China has devoted the [massive] resources needed to make the attempt. MD5 was considered highly secure because all the results are a string of 32 bits. Modular arithmetic is used for coding because the plain text cannot be exposed by running the algorithm backwards. Here, try it yourself.
Fast forward to 2014.
Here's a plot twist for you. Let's play time machine. I'm reading a book by Glenn Beck, a news host. Called "An Inconvenient Book", he delves on politics, marriage, economics, social programs, and the like. But he'll never be in the same league as Dave Barry in the humor department. I bought it at a thrift in Cape Canaveral last month. The book was published in 2007.
But something seemed familiar about the book. His articles on HIV counseling and Whoopi Goldberg seemed somehow familiar. That's odd, since I'd never heard of Glenn Beck before. I would remember any Glenn spelled his name with two "n"s. So looking back to see what happened on this day, 2004, what do I find?
In the Clayton Daily News from Jonesboro, GA, two articles caught my eye, both published August 6, 2004. One each by Kathy Jefcoat and April Avison. Has Glenn lifted the material, or did he quote it? I can't recall, I'm not about to reread the entire book to find the facts. I'm just saying by pure coincidence that I read both sets of articles in the past week. I do not believe in coincidences.
