MD5

Hash functions map binary strings of an arbitrary length to small binary strings of a fixed length.

The MD5 algorithm is a widely used hash function producing a 128-bit hash value (16 Bytes, 32 Hexdecimal characters).

The ComputeHash method of the System.Security.Cryptography.MD5 class returns the hash as an array of 16 bytes.

Example:

using System;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Text;

internal class Program
{
    private static void Main()
    {
        var source = "Hello World!";

        // Creates an instance of the default implementation of the MD5 hash algorithm.
        using (var md5Hash = MD5.Create())
        {
            // Byte array representation of source string
            var sourceBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(source);

            // Generate hash value(Byte Array) for input data
            var hashBytes = md5Hash.ComputeHash(sourceBytes);

            // Convert hash byte array to string
            var hash = BitConverter.ToString(hashBytes).Replace("-", string.Empty);

            // Output the MD5 hash
            Console.WriteLine("The MD5 hash of " + source + " is: " + hash);
        }
    }
}

Output: The MD5 hash of Hello World! is: ED076287532E86365E841E92BFC50D8C

Security Issues:

Like most hash functions, MD5 is neither encryption nor encoding. It can be reversed by brute-force attack and suffers from extensive vulnerabilities against collision and preimage attacks.

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

Table Of Contents