MD5
The fast hash that should not secure anything.
Where it came from
MD5 (Message Digest 5) was designed by Ron Rivest in 1991 as a fast 128-bit hash. For years it was the default for passwords and integrity. Then in 2004 researchers published practical collisions — two different files with the same MD5.
That killed its security use. Yet it survives for non-adversarial checksums (file dedup, etag hints) precisely because it is fast and short.
How it works
Like SHA, MD5 is one-way: text in, 16-byte digest out, rendered as 32 hex chars. But collisions are cheap to manufacture, so an attacker can forge a matching hash.
UWC computes MD5 in the browser for quick integrity checks — never trust it for passwords or signatures. For that, use SHA-256.
Hash with MD5
Quick MD5 checksum in your browser — fast, local, for non-security checks.