MD5 Code? (1 Viewer)

[Neily0_0]

I am more than new to this. I do Geocaching and have a puzzle to solve that I believe is MD5 Code It is four lines of numbers and letters with 64 characters in each line. My request is, how can I decode this. It should give me some coordinates to find the cache.

Neil

 

[Jon]

Welcome to the forums! We are the most active Microsoft Access community on the internet by far, with posts going back over 20 years!

To get started, I highly recommend you read the post below. It contains important information for all new users to this forum. https://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/threads/new-member-read-me-first.223250/ We look forward to having you around here, learning stuff and having fun!

 

[arnelgp]

My request is, how can I decode this.

i think you "can't".

 

[isladogs]

There are various free tools online but whether they will work for you is another matter as it depends on both the 'hash' used and any 'salting'.
I'll leave you to research those terms online

 

[arnelgp]

64 characters x 4 lines = 256 code.

MD5 is "1-way" hashing. you cannot reverse it.

 

[isladogs]

Yes I'm well aware of that.
I was careful in my choice of words and you'll notice I made no mention of reversing the encryption.
I stand by my comments about online tools.
You can check for yourself how these work ... and also why such tools are not guaranteed to work in all cases

 

[theDBguy]

Hi Neil. Welcome to AWF!

I have moved your topic out of the Introduction forum. You can start a new one there to introduce yourself.

Cheers!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

IF what you have really is an MD5 hash value, it is considered practically irreversible. You MIGHT look at this site:

Hash, hashing, and encryption toolkit

md5hashing.net

However, without knowing other factors that were fed into the hashing algorithm, you might not have enough to assure proper reversal. Not that such reversal can be assured anyway.

 

[isladogs]

I don't want to give too detailed an explanation but for encryption using MD5 (or RC4) as with ACCDB/ACCDE encryption, the password can only be retrieved by 'brute force attack'. However the time needed for that is likely to be prohibitively large.

An alternative approach is therefore used using 'rainbow tables'. These are tables which have been prepared using a very large number of passwords/hash keys. The decrypter can work through each of these in turn relatively quickly and if it finds a match, the hash is decrypted.
Such tools will only 'succeed' if the hash key / password is contained in the 'rainbow table'. If not, it will fail

'Salting' the data with a suitable text string before encryption will significantly reduce the chance of the data being recoverable by such an approach