Thread safety and java.security.MessageDigest

Has anyone noticed the lack of Thread safety in the MessageDigest class? When
throwing loads of simulaneous requests at it I was finding about 40 errors
per 100,000 calls.

So I stuck it in a synchronized block expecting to solve the problem but
suffer a performance hit. The wierd thing was that with the synchronized
block, the average time per call reduced to about 60% of what it was before.

Can anyone explain this?

I was using the default Sun implementation of the MD5 digest.

Rich

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