While ApiEditPage's md5 parameter isn't used for encryption (it's a checksum of the text being passed), it can cause problems in some applications, especially on Windows when FIPS is enabled (side note: even Microsoft don't suggest enabling FIPS unless you really have to), for example as in T177955: TargetInvocationException in ApiEdit.MD5 for AWB.

It would be useful if there was something else that AWB (and others) could use instead of MD5, to satisfy the cases where people cannot disable FIPS (due to reasons outside their control), but also still allowing this edit text validation/verification to still take place when editing pages.