HP-UX MD5 Secure Checksum version A.01.00.00 Release Notes

HP-UX MD5 Secure Checksum Release Notes
What’s in This Version
Chapter 1 5
What’s in This Version
The HP-UX MD5 Secure Checksum (codenamed MD5Checksum) bundle consists of the
following two components that can be installed independently:
• HP-UX MD5sum (md5sum checksum command)
• HP-UX LibCryptX (libcryptx libraries providing MD5 APIs)
The HP-UX MD5sum product provides the md5sum command, a more secure alternative to the
cksum command. The cksum command is a file integrity checker currently available on
HP-UX. It is based on a weak (by today’s standard) cyclic redundancy check mechanism
(32-bit wide), and is prone to high collision rates. The HP-UX MD5sum product relies on the
HP-UX LibCryptX product for the MD5 based APIs.
The md5sum command is more secure than the cksum command as it is based on the standard
MD5 algorithm providing 128-bit long fingerprints. This new command (md5sum) enables you
to verify (with a very high degree of certainty) the integrity of a downloaded package (using
ftp or http type of electronic downloads). The command can be used to compare files as well.
In addition to the md5sum command, the HP-UX MD5sum product includes a corresponding
man page, and a message catalog file.
The HP-UX LibCryptX product includes various flavors of the libcryptx shared library (used
by the md5sum command), include file(s) and man page(s).
Key Features and Benefits
The following are the list of key features supported by the HP-UX MD5 Secure Checksum
bundle:
• Strong file integrity check command (md5sum)
The HP-UX MD5sum product relies on the MD5 algorithm for hashing files. The 128-bit
fingerprint output of the MD5 hash is platform independent and conforms to the RFC
1321 standard (The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm). This product works with regular
files (text, binary objects), directories and standard input.
• New library (libcryptx)
The new shared library containing the MD5 interfaces is called libcryptx. The md5sum
command relies on the libcryptx library for the MD5 routines. The MD5 APIs provide
methods for hashing files and finite byte streams.
• Support for large files