Cryptographic hash functions for calculating the message digest of a message has been in practical use as an effective measure to maintain message integrity since a few decades. This message digest is unique, irreversible and avoids all types of collisions for any given input string. The message digest calculated from this algorithm is propagated in the communication medium along with the original message from the sender side and on the receiver side integrity of the message can be verified by recalculating the message digest of the received message and comparing the two digest values. In this paper we have designed and developed a new algorithm for calculating the message digest of any message and implemented t using a high level programming language. An experimental analysis and comparison with the existing MD5 hashing algorithm, which is predominantly being used as a cryptographic hashing tool, shows this algorithm to provide more randomness and greater strength from intrusion attacks. In this algorithm the plaintext message string is converted into binary string and fragmented into blocks of 128 bits after being padded with user defined padding bits. Then using a pseudo random number generator a key is generated for each block and operated with the respective block by a bitwise operator. This process is terated for the whole message and finally a fixed length message digest is obtained.

4 pages,2 figures, 1 tabular data set