WARNING, technical post. Non-Geeks, you may stop reading now.

It is the beginning of the end for the hashing algorithm MD5 (Message Digest 5). Someone just managed to find a way to modify data in a way that the MD5 digest of the modified data is the same as the one of the original data. It makes a MD5 hash not unique and reverisble anymore, i.e. useless..

Article sur slahsdot.

The consequences are potentially huge. MD5 is not only used by the basic user who wants to validate a file downloaded or by P2P, but also some networking algorithms use it to authenticate packets (HMAC-MD5), even some basic encryption algorithms use MD5, and a lot more..