NAME

md5, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, sha512, sha512t224, sha512t256, rmd160, skein256, skein512, skein1024, md5sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum, sha512sum, sha512t224sum, sha512t256sum, rmd160sum, skein256sum, skein512sum, skein1024sum, shasum — calculate a message-digest fingerprint (checksum) for a file

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The md5, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, sha512, sha512t224, sha512t256, rmd160, skein256, skein512, and skein1024 utilities take as input a message of arbitrary length and produce as output a “fingerprint” or “message digest” of the input.

The md5sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum, sha512sum, sha512t224sum, sha512t256sum, rmd160sum, skein256sum, skein512sum, and skein1024sum utilities do the same, but with command-line options and an output format that match those of their similary named GNU utilities.

The shasum utility does the same, but with command-line options and an output format that match those of the similarly named utility that ships with Perl.

In all cases, each file listed on the command line is processed separately. If no files are listed on the command line, or a file name is given as -, input is taken from stdin instead.

It is conjectured that it is computationally infeasible to produce two messages having the same message digest, or to produce any message having a given prespecified target message digest. The SHA-224 , SHA-256 , SHA-384 , SHA-512, RIPEMD-160, and SKEIN algorithms are intended for digital signature applications, where a large file must be “compressed” in a secure manner before being encrypted with a private (secret) key under a public-key cryptosystem such as RSA.

The MD5 and SHA-1 algorithms have been proven to be vulnerable to practical collision attacks and should not be relied upon to produce unique outputs, nor should they be used as part of a cryptographic signature scheme. As of 2017-03-02, there is no publicly known method to reverse either algorithm, i.e., to find an input that produces a specific output.

SHA-512t256 is a version of SHA-512 truncated to only 256 bits. On 64-bit hardware, this algorithm is approximately 50% faster than SHA-256 but with the same level of security. The hashes are not interchangeable.

SHA-512t224 is identical to SHA-512t256, but with the digest truncated to 224 bits.

It is recommended that all new applications use SHA-512 or SKEIN-512 instead of one of the other hash functions.

EXIT STATUS

The md5, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, sha512, sha512t224, sha512t256, rmd160, skein256, skein512, and skein1024 utilities exit 0 on success, 1 if at least one of the input files could not be read, and 2 if at least one file does not have the same hash as the -c option.

The md5sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum, sha512sum, sha512t224sum, sha512t256sum, rmd160, skein256, skein512, skein1024 and shasum utilities exit 0 on success and 1 if at least one of the input files could not be read or, when verifying checksums, does not have the expected checksum.

EXAMPLES

Calculate the MD5 checksum of the string “Hello”.

$ md5 -s Hello
MD5 ("Hello") = 8b1a9953c4611296a827abf8c47804d7

Same as above, but note the absence of the newline character in the input string:

$ echo -n Hello | md5
8b1a9953c4611296a827abf8c47804d7

Calculate the checksum of multiple files reversing the output:

$ md5 -r /boot/loader.conf /etc/rc.conf
ada5f60f23af88ff95b8091d6d67bef6 /boot/loader.conf
d80bf36c332dc0fdc479366ec3fa44cd /etc/rc.conf

This is almost but not quite identical to the output from GNU mode:

$ md5sum /boot/loader.conf /etc/rc.conf
ada5f60f23af88ff95b8091d6d67bef6  /boot/loader.conf
d80bf36c332dc0fdc479366ec3fa44cd  /etc/rc.conf

Note the two spaces between hash and file name. If binary mode is requested, they are instead separated by a space and an asterisk:

$ md5sum -b /boot/loader.conf /etc/rc.conf
ada5f60f23af88ff95b8091d6d67bef6 */boot/loader.conf
d80bf36c332dc0fdc479366ec3fa44cd */etc/rc.conf

Write the digest for /boot/loader.conf in a file named digest. Then calculate the checksum again and validate it against the checksum string extracted from the digest file:

$ md5 /boot/loader.conf > digest && md5 -c $(cut -f2 -d= digest) /boot/loader.conf
MD5 (/boot/loader.conf) = ada5f60f23af88ff95b8091d6d67bef6

Same as above but comparing the digest against an invalid string (“randomstring”), which results in a failure.

$ md5 -c randomstring /boot/loader.conf
MD5 (/boot/loader.conf) = ada5f60f23af88ff95b8091d6d67bef6 [ Failed ]

In GNU mode, the -c option does not compare against a hash string passed as parameter. Instead, it expects a digest file, as created under the name digest for /boot/loader.conf in the example above.

$ md5sum -c digest
/boot/loader.conf: OK

The digest file may contain any number of lines in the format generated in either BSD or GNU mode. If a hash value does not match the file, “FAILED” is printed instead of “OK”.

SEE ALSO

cksum(1), md5(3), ripemd(3), sha(3), sha256(3), sha384(3), sha512(3), skein(3)

R. Rivest, The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm, RFC1321.

J. Burrows, The Secure Hash Standard, FIPS PUB 180-2.

D. Eastlake and P. Jones, US Secure Hash Algorithm 1, RFC 3174.

RIPEMD-160 is part of the ISO draft standard "ISO/IEC DIS 10118-3" on dedicated hash functions.

Secure Hash Standard (SHS): https://www.nist.gov/publications/secure-hash-standard-shs

The RIPEMD-160 page: https://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~bosselae/ripemd160.html

BUGS

In bits mode, the original shasum script is capable of processing inputs of arbitrary length. This implementation is not, and will issue an error if the input length is not a multiple of eight bits.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This utility was originally derived from a program which was placed in the public domain for free general use by RSA Data Security.

Support for SHA-1 and RIPEMD-160 was added by Oliver Eikemeier <eik@FreeBSD.org>.

Support for SHA-2 was added by Colin Percival <cperciva@FreeBSD.org> and Allan Jude <allanjude@FreeBSD.org>.

Support for SKEIN was added by Allan Jude <allanjude@FreeBSD.org>.

Compatibility with GNU coreutils was added by Warner Losh <imp@FreeBSD.org> and much expanded by Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des@FreeBSD.org>, who also added Perl compatibility.