Why is the MD5 algorithm considered insecure?

The Message Digest Algorithm, or MD5, is a cryptographic hashing function. It is a part of the Message Digest Algorithm family, created to verify the integrity of a message or file that is hashed. MD5 is still used in a few cases. MD5 was created in 1991 by Ronald Rivest as an improvement to MD4. Here are the following reasons why MD5 is considered insecure:

• Collision: In cases where two different messages or files have the same hash values, it's called a collision. MD5 produces a fixed-size output of 128 bits (16 bytes) which is small compared to recently developed hashes. This flaw is frequently observed in MD5, which makes it unreliable for checking integrity.

• Speed: MD5 is a fast algorithm, which is helpful in many cases, but the same speed can be leveraged to crack the hash faster.

• Salt: MD5 does not support Salting. It is basically the addition of random data to input before hashing. Salting helps prevent Rainbow Table attacks, i.e., attacks where attackers can calculate hashes for many possible inputs and use the hash values to crack the hashes.

 Due to the following reasons, MD5 is considered insecure nowadays.