For those unaware, PHK created (amongst other things) the MD5crypt password hashing algorithm ($1$…). It came before bcrypt (1999), scrypt (2009), SHA2crypt (2016), etc, and was committed in 1994:
* https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/lib/libcrypt/crypt.c?re...
* https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/3b2b7f71deba2a...
To clarify: not MD5 itself. It was created in 1991 by Ron Rivest. (It is my experience that knowledge of these things isn't as widely distributed as one might hope.)
I first came across it in 1995/1996: Wow, what a magical tool for backend web stuff! I used it for everything.
Wait, is that the same guy who co-authorer the Floyd-Rivest Algorithm? Hmm, looks like it[0]. Huh, neat.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd%E2%80%93Rivest_algorithm
Also the same Rivest as Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest (that Stein dude was after my time), and the R in RSA.
is the difference between MD5 and MD5crypt the same as between Java and Javascript or are they actually related somehow?
MD5crypt is a password hashing algorithm that uses the MD5 digest hashing algorithm. MD5crypt basically calls MD5 a bunch of times in order to make it computationally expensive.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypt_(C)#MD5-based_scheme
related
Okay.
What qualifications does phk have that are relevant to the current subject?
He has a daughter and thus does not want to worry about her online well-being yet (see article).
But I believe that's misplaced, because she will be vulnerable as an adult, and there was never a way to produce encryption which was not easy to turn to non-crackable encryption for those not wanting to play along with national laws.