Re: MD5 Exploit Database?

From: Dave Dittrich (dittrichat_private)
Date: Sat Feb 01 2003 - 18:39:16 PST

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    On Sat, 25 Jan 2003, Simson L. Garfinkel wrote:
    
    > Matt,
    >
    > Thanks for responding to this. Do you think that I should go ahead with the
    > MD5 collection project? It doesn't seem like anything else is doing quite
    > this thing, and I think that it would be useful.
    >
    > Do you think that I shoudl collect both SHA-1 and MD5 codes?
    
    Simson,
    
    Known good files can help weed out things to look at, but what is left
    is still difficult to characterize.
    
    I don't know of anyone doing a database of known hashes of malware
    artifacts, but I have been party to more than one conversation about
    the benefits of one.  While it wouldn't be 100% reliable, by any means,
    it would help to id some known components of common rootkits.  The
    drawbacks to using just cryptographic hashes is that the change of 1
    single bit results in a new hash, so every new compile, edit,
    change in default IP address embedded in a DDoS program, etc., will
    result in a different hash.  This means other attributes (weighted
    strings, ELF header field values, file type ala "file", etc.)
    would also need to be compared.
    
    --
    Dave Dittrich                           Computing & Communications
    dittrichat_private             University Computing Services
    http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich    University of Washington
    
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