This one for the ubergeeks, amongst which I (hopefully) count myself. HashTab is a free Windows Explorer extension that adds a new “File Hashes” tab in the right click/properties dialog that simply displays the file’s calculated hash value, in order to verify a files’s integrity and authenticity.
Another feature that your brand new Hash Tab offers: to compare the hash values of another file to the one you are looking at. HashTab supports multiple hash algorithms such as CRC32,MD5, SHA1, SHA2, RipeMD, HAVAL and Whirlpool. Windows and Mac OSX versions availableIf you don’t know what they are, hash calculations are methods to reduce a file into a single unique number or identifier. You can calculate a hash number for pretty much any kind of file using any number of possible algorithms; however, should that file change at all, its hash number will change as well. Thus hash values are used to identify the authenticity of files, whether they have been changed or compromised by malware, or to compare files that may be the same but have different file names. Typically, a lot of download sites will list the MD5 hash along with the download link, allowing you to check that the file you downloaded is indeed the right file.
How to use: right click any file, select ’properties’ then click on the ’File Hashes’ tab. You will see a list of hash values.
If the algorithm you want is not listed click on the “options” link then check the appropriate algorithm to include it in the list of results (see screenshot to the right).
The verdict: what HashTab does is make it easy and simple to check has values calculated via multiple algorithms all at once from within Windows. Simple, yet very nice if its something you need to do. I post it here because I simply like the elegance of it.
Version Tested: 3.0
Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7. Mac OSX.
Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 781K).
Thanks for the tip. It installs easily and works great. Here’s to ubergeekhood!
Now, now gentlemen, I’m no geek yet this application will come in useful. May I enter the club ?
I am using at this time HashOnClick from 2BrightSparks, freeware as well, but this HashTab is obviously more complete, and after the hash value(s) of a file is one of it’s main caracteristics, if not the ultimate, so having it included in its Property dialog is logical.
Nice find.
ubergeekdom rules!
Glad you guys like this one.
Prefer to it http://code.kliu.org/hashcheck/ because this one permit to save the hashes in respectives formats, like sfv, sha-1 etc
It’s free, and has no pub for the software in the checksum file, while other programs put in it pub for their softs.
@ Anonymous: thanks for the tip!
This could be really useful for checking the integrity of downloaded files, as you said. However, do you know if the checksums are generated when the file is opened or when it is first introduced to the system, by explorer.exe or something of the like? I’m concerned because generating multiple hashes with multiple encryption methods for every file could seriously impede system performance.
I know this because a few months back I wrote a “theoretical” anti-malware scanning engine (eg scanned a drive checking files against a dummy definition database) which generated SHA-1, SHA-256 and MD5 hashes for each file it passed. Without any encryption it took about 3 seconds to pass 1000 files, with all three encryption methods the time was extended to 45-50 seconds.