Md5deep
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The correct title of this article is md5deep. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
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 Special Agent Jesse Kornblum of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and continues to be maintained by Kornblum.
The name 'md5deep' is unfortunately ambiguous. As of version 1.12, 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 in reality 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.
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, and 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.
