Posted by Andy Hassall on 05/27/05 23:20

On Fri, 27 May 2005 21:01:26 +0100, "simon" <spambucket@myoddweb.com> wrote:

>> Start with a given string, it will always map to the same hash. Start with
>> the hash, it could map to any one of an infinite number of strings.
>
>I don't quite agree. But that's not the point.
>I was only replying to the OP. So for the third time, it is technically
>possible to get the string but almost impossible to do so.

No. it's impossible to get the original string, since it's impossible to know
which of the infinite number of plaintexts was used to produced the one hash
value they all map to.

The OP wrote:

>[...]encrypted using md5() from a php script, is
>there a way of returning the unencrypted data[...]

This is impossible.

--
Andy Hassall / <andy@andyh.co.uk> / <http://www.andyh.co.uk>
<http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space> Space: disk usage analysis tool

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