Hands-on Project 11-1

"Hashing, also called a one-way hash, is a process for creating a unique "signature" for a set of data. This signature, called a hash or digest, represents the contents.

Hashing is used only for integrity to ensure that the information is in its original form and that no unauthorized person or malicious software ahs altered the data.

The Message Digest 5 (MD5), a revision of MD4, was created in 1991 by Ron River and designed to address MD4's weakness.

Like MD4, the length of the message is padded to 512 bits. The hash algorithm then uses four variables of 32 bits each in a round-robin fashion to create a value that is compressed to generate the hash." (Mark Ciampa, 2009)

=========================================

Homepage of md5deep
















Click on highlighted link to download md5deep
















Country1.txt and Country2.txt
















Hash algorithm for MD5 (128 bits)














Hash algorithm for SHA-1 (160 bits)














Hash algorithm for SHA-2 (SHA-256) (256 bits)














Hash algorithm for Whirlpool (512 bits)













==========================================

Reflection

By comparing two hash values will allow one to know if the information inside the file has been altered anot. This prevents any unauthorized person or malicious software from altering the information without the user knowing (eg. Man-in-the-Middle attack).

One of the example of hashing in our daily life is Automated Teller Machine (ATM) Card. As ATM does not keep a record of the user's PIN and it also does not have to get the user's pin from some remote database and send back to the ATM, hence reduces chances of people trying to hack into the systems just to get the PIN numbers. Therefore, by using hashing to verify the accuracy of the data, it will get rid of the chances of having the data exposed to a third party and making it vulnerable to attacks.