MD5 and RIPEMD-160 are cryptographic hash functions used to verify data integrity.
MD5 takes an input of arbitrary length and produces a 128-bit hash value. It operates by padding the input, appending the length, initializing buffers, and processing the message in 512-bit blocks through four rounds of compression.
RIPEMD-160 produces a 160-bit hash value. Like MD5, it pads and appends the length before initializing buffers and processing the message in 512-bit blocks. However, it uses two parallel lines of five rounds each consisting of 10 steps to compress the input. Both functions aim to make collisions difficult by using shifting and logical operations in their compression functions.