Acquiring Digital Data - Choosing Essay

Total Length: 797 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 2

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A combination of Ethernet and USB data acquisition products would be useful.

A hash is a one way operation that is performed on a block of data to create a unique hash value that represents the contents of the data. No matter when the hash is performed, the same hashing algorithm performed on the same data will always produce the same hash value. If any of the data changes, the hash value will change appropriately. Hashes are not useful for encrypting data because they are not intended to be used to reproduce the original data from the hash value. Hashes are most useful to verify the integrity of the data when used with an asymmetric signing algorithm. ("Creating a Hash with CNG," 2010, para. 1)

In choosing a hash the one chosen for this essay is the HashTab Shell Extension to Windows, HashTab provides OS extensions to calculate file hashes. HashTab supports many hash algorithms such as MD5, SHA1, SHA2, RipeMD, HAVAL and Whirlpool. Hashtab is supported as a Windows shell extension and a Mac Finder plug-in.
HashTab provides an easy way to verify file integrity and authenticity. The main reason for choosing HashTab is its ability to work with Windows XP and it is one of the easier hash programs to manipulate and navigate through.

The importance of the hash value to the investigator is to allow the investigator to authenticate the hash algorithm. If two computer files are identical, then they will have the same hash value. Even if the files have a different name, if their contents are the same, exactly the same, they will have the same hash. This allows for easy identification and elimination of redundant documents. But if you so much as change a single comma in a thousand page text, it will have a completely different hash number than the original. There are no similarities in the hash numbers based on similarities in the files. Each number is unique. That is how the math in all hashing works. (Losey, n.d., para. 1).....

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