MD5 Cryptanalysis: A Retrospective on Hash Function Design 1. Foundations of Cryptographic Hash Functions 1.1 The Hash Function Security Landscape 2. The Merkle-Damgård Construction 2.1 The Padding Scheme and Message Preparation 2.2 Internal State Architecture 2.3 Processing Pipeline Overview 3. The Compression Function: Round-by-Round Analysis 3.1 Step Functions and Their Properties 3.2 Operation Details and Bit Rotation 3.3 Differential Path Construction 4. Cryptanalytic Attacks and Their Evolution 4.1 The 2004 Wang Attack 4.2 Chosen-Prefix Collision Attacks 4.3 The Flame Malware Exploitation 5. Security Implications for Modern Systems 5.1 Applications Requiring Cryptographic Security 5.2 Non-Security-Critical Use Cases 5.3 Migration Strategies and Algorithm Selection 6. Implementation Reference and Code Examples 6.1 Python Implementation 6.2 Rust Implementation 6.3 Go Implementation 7. Testing and Verification Procedures 7.1 RFC 1321 Test Vectors 7.2 Collision Detection Verification 8. Conclusion and Future Outlook
