The new major release of Iside, the message digest computing tool, is available.

Data integrity checking and file and folder comparison is made fast and easy with Iside, through message digest computing technology.

(PRWEB) August 25, 2004

While Internet is achieving a broader band almost everywhere, more and more applications rely on the exchange of very large data files. These exchanges demand accuracy in file transfer and data integrity.

This is true even for the casual PC user, when he downloads very large files from the Internet using various protocols, such as:

• HTTP
• FTP
• Peer to peer (P2P)

These files may contain software (any package like ZIP or TAR), music (MP3, WMA), pictures (JPG, PNG, GIF, TIF) videos (MPG, WMV, AVI) or any other multimedia content. A movie, for instance, can be a file of more than 4 gigabytes.

Anyway, the file received after downloading can be DIFFERENT from the one originally selected.

This can happen mainly for two reason:

1. Malicious modifications on the source site (including viruses, worms, spyware)

2. Bad transfer (due to trasmission errors)

Data integrity means the opportunity to verify, in a fast way, that the content downloaded is digitally equal - or, if you prefer, bit per bit equal - to the one originally selected. Doing so is easy by confronting the files' message digest.

For instance: suppose you want to download the latest Linux distribution. On the HTML Download page you will likely find a file like this:

Hash: MD5

ad3d50fe12c0672a7e4d32b466ab6851 XXlinux10.0-Official-Download-CD1.i586.iso

Download the ISO image. Now, before burning a CD you would like to be sure that you just downloaded the exact ISO image, bit per bit. And you want to be sure that the file you downloaded is the proper file and not just one with the same name (but, perhaps, plenty of viruses and spywares...)

You may accomplish this by using a "message digest computing tool", that is a software capable of computing the message digest (also known as HASH CODE) of any file with any standard known algorithms, such as:

• MD5
• SHA1
• SHA256
• CRC32
• RIPEMD160

Now, Iside is the perfect tool to make hash confrontation between files. Iside computes a file hash code with almost any standard hashing function.

Also, it is possible to compare files by using desktop integration: right click on a file, select Copy and by right clicking on another file you will discover if they are equal.

Iside, the message digest computing tool, has now reached maturity with this new major release (v1.3), and it's available for a trial download at http://www.littlelite.net/iside