What does MD5 mean?

MD5 is the abbreviation of Message-Digest algorithm 5

What is the MD5 Algorithm?

MD5 is a cryptographic hash function algorithm that takes string of any length and changes it into a fixed-length string of 16 bytes. It always produced a 128 bit hash value.

Use of MD5

MD5 hashing used in many ways in programming. some common usage are following:

1. It is used for security purpose in web applications for storing a password or other sensitive data into database.
2. MD5 hashes always produced the same output for same given data. because of this, these are also useful to ensuring the data integrity of files.
3. MD5 is not an encryption, this is a fingerprint of any data that will remain same for that input.
4. The hash is irreversible, You can not retrieve the actual input used for generating the hash.