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:
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.
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.
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.
I first came across it in 1995/1996: Wow, what a magical tool for backend web stuff! I used it for everything.