Bruteforcing md5 in python

md5 is a cryptographic hash function used to verify file integrity as well as to store passwords in applications especially on the web. However it’s popularity is on the decline because of the discoveries of collisions which makes it less secure then it was assumed to be. Python’s md5 library has support for generating md5 hashes and thus it is very easy to write a program to launch a dictionary attack against a given hash. I use /usr/share/dict/linux.words as the wordlist which is pretty nice with 483,523 words! Anyway this is what I came up with for some quick and dirty dictionary attack :

#md5crack.py by Himanshu : http://cslife.wordpress.com
import md5
def main():
    targetHash = raw_input("Enter md5 hash to decipher: ")
    success = False
    dictionaryFile = "/usr/share/dict/linux.words"
    try:
        for word in open(dictionaryFile):
            if checkMd5(word.rstrip("\n"), targetHash):
                success = True
                break
    except IOError:
	    print dictionaryFile, "not found!"
    if success:
	    print "Hash found is", word
    else:
	    print "Hash not found"

def checkMd5(getString, testHash):
    getHash = md5.new(getString).hexdigest()
    if getHash == testHash:
	    return True
    else:
	    return False

if __name__== '__main__':
    main()

ps : Thanks to stylistic suggestions by Ragzouken from #python in freenode.