Hmmm. This is not sound cryptology. In essence, the MD5 digest is used
as a pseudo one-time-pad though found by deterministic means. One of the
basic principles of the OTP is that one NEVER reuses key material. Let's
assume that the first sixteen characters of the password are compromised,
then one can recover the MD5 mask by XOR; now the remainder of the password
provides NO additional security whatsoever. For a longer password, I think
you'd need either a longer digest or use of a stronger cipher in some chain-
ing mode. Maybe a some feedback method with MD5 would work, but that would
probably break existing implementations.
Regards,
-- Christopher Oliver Traverse Communications Systems Coordinator 223 Grandview Pkwy, Suite 108 oliver@traverse.com Traverse City, Michigan, 49684 (define magic (lambda (f) (lambda (x) x))) (define (more-magic n) (lambda (f) (lambda (x) (f ((n f) x)))))