For people who don't know:
SHA256 and MD5 are both hash functions. This means you give it some data like a picture of a piece of text and it scrambles it and makes it totally unrecoverable. That sounds useless but there is some times when it is important. The main use for it is for making sure PWs are correct without the possibility of a hacker getting into the database and seeing all the PWs.
How is this related to ROBLOX at all? When an image is uploaded, ROBLOX makes an MD5 hash of the image and stores it at their image site on the URL /[the MD5 hash] What is the problem? MD5 hashes have collisions. A collision is when 2 things have the same hash despite being different. As you may know, there is some combinations of items that someone can wear that will make the avatar look totally different. The reason of this is because the hash is the exact same as the one of another picture. Why is SHA256 better? SHA256 has a much lower chance of a collision than MD5, which can reduce the amount of these glitches even as ROBLOX becomes more popular and has many new players join.
Please tell me if I made any mistakes in this or you think I could make this easier to understand.
I want a mod to see this, it could potentially stop many glitches in the future. Even I have plans to mess with this system to have some fun. |