How do I check a hash?

A simple question for most of you. How do I check the hash of a program that I download? I have many programs installed and have no idea if one of them can perform this task. Does windows XP have this ability?

Thanks, innerpeace

 

theres lots of freeware for checking a file's MD5 hash. heres one such utility from DiamondCS.

 

Thank you for your recommendation. Do I need another to cover SHA-1 or is it not that common?

 

HashTab Windows Shell Extension works nicely. It provides a file hash tab when you view a file's properties.

Nick

 

That looks interesting nick s. It has 3 different hash types too. Thanks

 

Is there a free programme that can compare hash of two or more files?

 

Karen's Hasher. http://www.karenware.com/powertools/pthasher.asp

 

Thanks. I will check it.

 

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,17010220
gives some suggestions

 

From the guy (Patrick M. Kolla) that wrote Spybot-S&D... FileAlyzer

(my bolding)

Mike

 

Thanks everyone! Good link FanJ, that's quite a list.

Cheers, innerpeace

 

HashCalc.
It calculates more things than i'll ever need.

 

I use winMd5Sum for MD5 Sums. It's very good & simple, you can even compare the MD5 with the one usually given at download sites and it tells you if it is the same or not.
The DiamondCS recommended above, gave me a false MD5 on a linux distro I downloaded. winMd5Sum then came in and saved the day
Oh, it's freeware of course.

 

The more it use FileAlyzer (from the guy, Patrick M. Kolla, that wrote Spybot-S&D), the more I am impressed.

I just discovered I can hash a whole folder! Yes, I am very easy.

I had download some files from many different places to check the hash to verify if they are all the same. (I am assuming that same file would not be infected from many different DL sites.)

I assume all the other GUI hash programs can also do this.

Mike

 

No, i don't think so, but i got Filealyzer also. Why? beats me, it shows stuff.
HashCalc can calculate this: (edit: the drop down hides a tick box "HMAC"- you tick it and the drop down next to it shows text string or hex string)

 

That is what I like best... I may not have a clue what most of that is, but once in a while I see something that is interesting. I might see that program1.exe uses the byte-smasher.exe to pack/compress program1.exe to make it smaller on disk. I may see byte-smasher.exe also used in other programs. Nothing special about that, but after 50 times seeing byte-smasher.exe, I have some knowledge that byte-smasher.exe is a common packing program.

So can Filealyzer...



Notice on the left where is says, "E:\n2\shellext\powertoy\setup\mini\obj...", looks like the M$ programmer has a drive E:

I mentioned somewhere I used the "Command Prompt" a lot, for example...



This example uses strings to search for strings of a default length of 3 or more UNICODE (or ASCII) characters.

I then "pipe" (the "|" key on your keyboard) the output of "strings" through a XP program called "findstr" looking for just "http".

That example gives me a clue if ShadowTip.exe did try to phone home, it might be one of those sites.

Many years ago, I found "ardvarkheaven" inside a program from a company from Texas. (Aardvark... an animal common in Texas.)

Mike

 

Nice. Good toy ain't it?
But my main observation is that HashCalc calculates an army of hashes and checksums.. !

 

For quick hash calculations, I use HashOnClick http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html
It integrates into the right-click context menu.

For a quick comparison between 2 files on my PC, I use Hasher http://www.den4b.com/projects.php

Both work well for me...

 

deleted a post, rubbish

EDIT: just a note to clarify, be sure to uncheck "HMAC" box to calculate a checksum in HashCalc.
Somehow it was checked for me, and it produced the wrong checksum.
HMAC is "to calculate the HMAC ( Keyed - Hash Message Authentication Code ) for the data" (helpfile).

 

I do agree with HAN that the tool by Denis Kozlov is the very best out there to check your hashes.

~snip~ - link to site already provided in Han's post - snapdragin~

Really fine software.

 

Hey innerpeace
This has been an interesting little thread.
Simple question has resulted in huge resource reveal !!

I assume the original Q was re checking Dl's ??

There have been numerous posts re md5 reliability recently, overall it is still probably ok and as you see there are options

if you're still interested:

Fwiw I found one leetle tool to do md5 checks:
no install
quick
tiny (100kb)
free
reliable for me so far

Just > highlight & R.Click> "copy"> hit md5.exe>md5 in question is already loaded> browse to file : presto

 

Hi Longboard, I was surprised to see the thread dug up. Your right, I was wanting to check dl's for reliability. There are many good suggestions in this thread. I like leetle programs that don't consume resources . I don't dl that much so this just may fit the bill. Thank you very much and I will check it out. This thread is definitely one that belongs in my favorites .

Cheers, innerpeace