MD5 proposal

>> My main concern here would be that basing the proposed method on an 
>> implementation (md5-crypt), which may change or may be mixed with some 
>> other implementation, rather than on the documented algorithm (md5 
>> hash), which cannot, may cause confusion in the future.
>> And, as a side question from a person far from cryptography, is it a 
>> proved fact that iterative complexity of md5-crypt makes the hash better?
> It makes dictionary attacks harder and more timeconsuming, it also
> makes it harder to do hardware implementations because you need
> many times more hardware.

the way out of this would seem to be for someone to write an internet draft
on salted md5 and process it through the ietf security area.

randy