• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Quick and Dirty md5

    A hashing function is used to calculate a hash value.  If you insert a file into a hashing function then it should produce a value that is almost certain to be unique (there’s always the remote likelihood that no matter how good your function, you may end up with a duplicate).   The openssl command is used to access a number of functions/ciphers including sha1, base64, md5, rc4/rc5 and of course des/des3.  It is a very simple command to use, simply provide the cipher, followed by the path to the file you would like to get a hash value (aka digest) for.  So if I have a file called myfile.txt and I…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security,  Ubuntu,  Unix

    openssl and Signatures

    A checksum can be used to determine if a file has been tampered with at a later date.  To run a checksum use the following command: openssl dgst -HASHTYPE path_to_file HASHTYPE would then be md2, md4, md5, mdc2, rmd160, sha or sha1.  Let’s go ahead and do a checksum of our smb.conf file: openssl dgst -md5 /var/db/smb.conf You should then see output similar to the following: MD5(/var/db/smb.conf)= e4b58a63c6682b298aeca3ad40734c1e MD5(/var/db/smb.conf)= e4b58a63c6682b298aeca3ad40734c1e