md5deep
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| md5deep | |
|---|---|
| Latest release | 2.0.1 / October 31, 2007 |
| Preview release | 3.0-alpha1 / April 8, 2008 |
| Written in | C |
| OS | Cross-platform |
| License | Public Domain |
| Website | http://md5deep.sourceforge.net/ |
md5deep is a software package used in the computer security, system administration and computer forensics communities for purposes of running large numbers of files through any of several different cryptographic digests. It was originally written by then Special Agent Jesse Kornblum of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and continues to be maintained by Kornblum. At the time it was written, there were no programs capable of recursively hashing a directory tree or matching known hashes against input files.
The name 'md5deep' is unfortunately specific. As of version 2.0, the md5deep package contains several different programs capable of performing MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, TIGER192 and WHIRLPOOL digests, each one of them named by the digest type followed by the word "deep"--thus, the name may confuse some people into thinking it only provides the MD5 algorithm when the package supports many more.
md5deep can be invoked in several different ways. Typically a user will operate it recursively, where md5deep walks through one directory at a time giving digests of each file found, and recursing into any subdirectories within. Its recursive behavior is approximately depth-first, which has the benefit of presenting files in lexicographical order. On UNIX-style systems, similar functionality can be often obtained by combining find with hashing utilities such as md5sum, sha256sum, or tthsum.
md5deep exists for Windows and most UNIX-based systems, including Mac OS X. It is present in Mac OS X's Fink and MacPorts projects. Binary packages exist for most free UNIX systems. A Visual Basic front-end has recently been written for Windows systems, but no other graphical front-ends are known to exist.
Since md5deep was written by an employee of the U.S. government, it is in the public domain. Other software surrounding it, such as graphical front-ends, may be protected by copyright law.
