Oracle Database Discussions

I am working on an application migration from Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.2.0 to Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.5.0.

This application stores user passwords as varchar hash values of dbms_obfuscation_toolkit.md5 encryption.

I noticed a serious issue when running the following simple test:

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set serveroutput on
declare
v_input varchar2(2000) := 'test';
md5key varchar2(32) := null;
begin
md5key := dbms_obfuscation_toolkit.md5(input_string => v_input);
dbms_output.put_line('Hash for "' || v_input || '" is "' || md5key ||'".');
end;

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The output for 9.2.0.2.0 is:

Hash for "test" is " ¿kÍF!ÓsÊÞN¿&'´ö".

The output for 9.2.0.5.0 is DIFFERENT and is:

Hash for "test" is " ¿k¿!¿¿N¿&'¿".

Can anyone tell me why in the world dbms_obfuscation_toolkit.md5 is returning different results and how to correct this so that all the application password hash data will not be lost?

Thank you.