HP-UX MD5 Secure Checksum A.01.01.02 Release Notes for HP-UX 11i v3

HP-UX MD5 Secure Checksum Release Notes

Overview

Chapter 16

Overview

You can use the HP-UX MD5 Secure Checksum to establish checksum values for files and use

the checksum to verify file contents later. If you know the MD5 checksum value that was

previously established for an executable binary file or other static file, you can use the HP-UX

MD5 Secure Checksum utility md5sum to periodically verify the integrity of the file. You can

also use md5sum to verify the integrity of downloaded file if a file has an MD5 checksum

published (such as a depot file from the HP Software Depot).

The HP-UX MD5 Secure Checksum bundle is composed of the following products:

•HP-UX MD5sum (md5sum checksum command)

The md5sum command is a more secure alternative to the cksum command. The cksum

command checks file integrity and is currently available on HP-UX. The cksum command

is based on a weak (by today’s standards) cyclic redundancy check mechanism with a

32-bit checksum, and is prone to high collision rates.

The md5sum command is based on the MD5 algorithm and generates 128-bit message

digests. The md5sum command enables you to verify the integrity of files downloaded over

a network connection. You can also use the md5sum command to compare files and verify

the integrity of files.

In addition to the md5sum command, the HP-UX MD5sum product includes a

corresponding manpage, and a message catalog file.

• HP-UX LibCryptX (libcryptx libraries providing MD5 APIs)

The HP-UX LibCryptX product includes multiple variants of the libcryptx shared

library used by the md5sum command, include files, and manpage.

Key Features and Benefits

The following are the list of key features supported by the HP-UX MD5 Secure Checksum

bundle:

• Strong authentication

The 128-bit output of the MD5 hash is platform independent and conforms to the RFC

1321 standard (The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm).

• Support for large files

The md5sum command and APIs support hashing of large files up to 2

bytes in size.

• High performance and multithreading capability