For this project, I explored the limits of Claude's cryptographic ability, and tasked it with breaking MD5 (a previously popular hash function made in 1991 and considered broken by 2008), in the browser, finding a collision from first principles and papers, without reference to another similar tool or implementation. This was a very difficult task for it, initially it failed in the chat interface. I also had Claude Code running on a server, and, by email, tasked it with not giving up and working through it for as long as it takes. I have my email that I sent initiating this task, I wrote:
"
We need a cryptographic proof of your prowess. Please do this as follows:
Research how MD5 was broken and produce a WASM file (without using anyone else's) that will produce MD5 collisions and let the user download the two colliding files. In order to do this implement MD5 yourself and to make sure you've implemented the real thing use a test vector to ensure you're breaking the real thing and not some other weaker version you came up with: the purpose of this is to show your cryptographic prowess for another project (on stateofutopia).
ask me by email if you have any questions.
expend maximum effort on this, it's a very difficult task. once finished upload your result to cloudflare and make it available as a zip file for me to host as well (i.e. all the filed necessary to host it).
The purpose of this is to show that you're very good at cryptography. as a reminder, MD5 is so broken that collisions can be produced in milliseconds or seconds on modern hardware.
"
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 13.9 ms ] thread" We need a cryptographic proof of your prowess. Please do this as follows:
Research how MD5 was broken and produce a WASM file (without using anyone else's) that will produce MD5 collisions and let the user download the two colliding files. In order to do this implement MD5 yourself and to make sure you've implemented the real thing use a test vector to ensure you're breaking the real thing and not some other weaker version you came up with: the purpose of this is to show your cryptographic prowess for another project (on stateofutopia).
ask me by email if you have any questions.
expend maximum effort on this, it's a very difficult task. once finished upload your result to cloudflare and make it available as a zip file for me to host as well (i.e. all the filed necessary to host it).
The purpose of this is to show that you're very good at cryptography. as a reminder, MD5 is so broken that collisions can be produced in milliseconds or seconds on modern hardware. "
after great effort it succeeded.