How would I go about decrypting an md5 hash?
Thanks for any help.
you wouldn't.
so what would I do then? If I want to compare a password in a database that has been encrypted using md5, can I only convert the entered password to an md5 hash and compare that to the one in the database?
Thanks
exactly. MD5 is a non reversable encryption.
You can't decrypt an md5 hash however you can derive all the possible values through brute force. Basically starting with a and ending at zzzzz you can check each md5 hash against the one you'd like to decrypt for all strings from 1 - 5 characters long. (5 isn't a limit just an example) Get it?
Um, you missed digits and other printable characters as well - not to mention high ASCII 🙂 Why would you want to, except to serve as an example of why people shouldn't have such short passwords?
