The MD5 algorithm and its successor, SHA-1, are no longer considered secure, because it is too easy to create hash collisions with them. That is, it takes too little computational effort to come up with a different input that produces the same MD5 or SHA-1 hash, and using the new, same-hash value gives an attacker the same access as if he had the originally-hashed value. This applies as well to the other Message-Digest algorithms: MD2, MD4, MD6, HAVAL-128, HMAC-MD5, DSA (which uses SHA-1), RIPEMD, RIPEMD-128, RIPEMD-160, HMACRIPEMD160.

The following APIs are tracked for use of obsolete crypto algorithms:

Ask Yourself Whether

The hashed value is used in a security context like:

There is a risk if you answered yes to any of those questions.

Recommended Secure Coding Practices

Safer alternatives, such as SHA-256, SHA-512, SHA-3 are recommended, and for password hashing, it’s even better to use algorithms that do not compute too "quickly", like bcrypt, scrypt, argon2 or pbkdf2 because it slows down brute force attacks.

Sensitive Code Example

val md1: MessageDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA");  // Sensitive:  SHA is not a standard name, for most security providers it's an alias of SHA-1
val md2: MessageDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA1");  // Sensitive

Compliant Solution

val md1: MessageDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-512"); // Compliant

See