How were the initial values for the chaining variables in MD5 determined?

jaip

12/14/23, 3:22 PM

The original description of the MD5 algorithm initializes the values of A, B, C, and D to the following:

word A: 01 23 45 67
word B: 89 ab cd ef
word C: fe dc ba 98
word D: 76 54 32 10

How were the values determined and does it matter how they were chosen?

108

1 + 0

Score:2

Crypto

Daniel S

12/15/23, 8:43 AM

These are obtained by counting up in base 16 and then counting down in base 16.

Specifically we break the 4x 32-bit words into 32 4-bit pieces and treat each piece of 4-bits as a hex digit (equally you can think of this as breaking each byte in half). We set these first 16 of these hex digits to be the numbers 0, 1 ,2,... f and the next 16 of them to be f, e ,d , c,..., 0.

Incremental counting is considered a natural enough operation that these are not "magic numbers", but rather a good example of "nothing up my sleeve" numbers.

+ 1

fgrieu

12/15/23, 2:07 PM

Addition: the security argument of a [Merkle-Damgård](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle%E2%80%93Damg%C3%A5rd_construction) hash such as MD5 or SHA-256 requires the Initialization Value of the first round to be a public value chosen non-maliciously. Hence the use of [nothing up my sleeve numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing-up-my-sleeve_number), which are arbitrary enough (contrary to all-zero), but pre-existing or regular (preventing malicious choice).

Elon Musk

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