System Requirements

• Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework; only the runtime or redistributable package is required. .NET 2.0 requires:
  • Windows 98, 98 SE, ME, 2000 SP3 or higher, XP SP2 or higher, Server 2003, or any flavor of Vista
  • Windows Installer 2.0 for Windows 98/ME, 3.0 for all other OSes (3.1 recommended)
  • Internet Explorer 5.01 or higher
  • 280MB disc space for the x86 version, 610MB for the x64 version
• About 1MB of free disk space
• No hard memory or processor limits are know beyond the OS and .NET's requirements, but obviously the more the merrier

Note: WinHasher may work on non-Windows platforms with a .NET 2.0 compatible framework like Mono. However, this is untested beyond running it through MoMA (which it passed). Use on a non-Windows platform is considered unsupported; there are far better hashing options available outside of Windows anyway, such as OpenSSL or Jacksum.

The implementations of the Whirlpool and Tiger hash algorithms have been lovingly stolen from the Legion of the Bouncy Castle Crypto API. The BC implementations are based on .NET 1.1, but I have since ported these to be subclasses of Microsoft's System.Security.Cryptography.HashAlgorithm class, so they should be usable by virtually any .NET 2.0 application.

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Features

• Two primary interfaces: A small Windows GUI applet and a console (command line) program
• Two primary operating modes: Compute the hash of a single file, or compare the contents of multiple files by comparing the hash of each one
• Supported hashing algorithms: MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, RIPEMD-160, Whirlpool (2003 revision), and Tiger (1995 original, not "Tiger2")
• Windows applet supports drag-and-drop functionality; automatically compute the hash of a single file by dropping it onto the applet, or drop one or more files to add them to the compare list
• Optional "Send To" shortcuts allow you to right-click any file in Windows Explorer and instantly get its hash, or right-click multiple files to compare their contents
• Long running processes (such as hashing an individual very large file or comparing the hashes of many files) can now be cancelled when running in GUI mode

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Download WinHasher

You can download the current version of WinHasher from the following links. A GnuPG digital signature and various hashes of the file (generated by WinHasher, no less) are also provided for verification.

Installer:	WinHasher_1.2_Setup.exe (366k)
GnuPG Signature:	WinHasher_1.2_Setup.exe.asc
Signing Key:	Jeff's Public Key
MD5 Hash:	ee293990e74e777b1ebee8ce113cb2cc
SHA-1 Hash:	753133c686a5b27350112763517da8667a51fe23
SHA-256 Hash:	83c1da5c185dbdbeedac3ce1539c02cfa9395363c5b62a25fd124611caeda35c
RIPEMD-160 Hash:	0c880c5059b4e2ed377539d39d9ac337e21fe196
Tiger Hash:	38f5a79aeac0623629b539199f718c8af8aa852a1a13ce7d

WinHasher is released under version 2.0 of the GNU General Public License. Thus, you can also download the C# source code:

Source ZIP archive:	WinHasher_1.2_Source.zip (108k)
GnuPG Signature:	WinHasher_1.2_Source.zip.asc
Signing Key:	Jeff's Public Key
MD5 Hash:	8a5af2e63fafab534a9f72602fc07c56
SHA-1 Hash:	a9b977b92bcf043aff5bccae0b1948bd184f4179
SHA-256 Hash:	797dbe8162138c1b2d06b53d04ad64946d9c441278625c62c05e1da4885a1a5f
RIPEMD-160 Hash:	f781475d4f7692f3496f83832fc4926ed5dc277a
Tiger Hash:	8b77c62b24c24e5b5806d8437a7b530c6f2923dacf161175

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Installation Instructions

Simply download and run the setup installer (after verfiying the digital signature and/or hashes, of course). It's as simple as that. The installer allows you to choose a number of options, such as which modules to install (the Windows application, the console programs, help files, etc.) and what shortcuts to create. Uninstalling is just as easy; either run the uninstall program from the Start menu or remove the program through the Add/Remove Programs interface.

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WinHasher Program History

Why WinHasher?

Cryptographic hashing is readily available on many computer operating systems. It often comes built-in to the OS or as a (relatively) standard optional package. Mac OS, Linux, Free/OpenBSD, and many other OSes include OpenSSL as either a pre-installed or easily installable optional component. OpenSSL includes several command-line components for generating cryptographic hashes and there are number of graphical user interface (GUI) applications that allow point-and-click access to its capabilities.

Not so with Microsoft Windows. Windows does not include any built-in utilities for cryptographic hashes, and installing and using OpenSSL on Windows is not a trivial matter. The typical Windows user of today is much less familiar with the Windows Console (i.e. command line) let alone compiling software from source. And while cryptographic hashes are pretty much standard in programming libraries such as the Microsoft .NET Framework, the user is required to write and compile their own applications to use them.

This "hashing divide" has annoyed me for some time. While I consider myself to be an operating system agnostic and find myself equally home on both Windows and Linux, there are many times I've downloaded Windows-only software but didn't have the capability to verify the file's hash. Either I've been unable to install and run OpenSSL on a given machine, or I haven't had the time or access to a Linux box to copy the file over, generate the hash, and verify it before install. So I wanted to create a quick, simple, easy-to-use Windows app so I could get the hash of a file without waiting or moving it around. I also thought it would be a nice idea to be able to quickly compare the hashes of multiple files without having to generate each one and manually check every hexadecimal digit, so I added that functionality too. After writing the program, I thought it might be useful to others, so I decided to share.

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Version History

• Version 1.0: Initial release
• Version 1.1: Improved GUI responsiveness by moving the actual hashing operations into a System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker object, so the hashing takes place in a different thread than the GUI. Now the GUI (regardless of whether the main window is opened or the process is launched by a "Send To" shortcut) will display an "in progress" dialog box to let you know that it's actually working. Before, hashes of really big files (say, several gigabyte DVD ISOs) seemed to disappear into nowhere, with no indication that the program was doing anything. The progress dialog includes a cancel button to allow the user to abort the operation while it is in progress. Unfortunately, there's no way to indicate how far along we are in an individual hash, an artifact of the System.Security.Cryptography.HashAlgorithm implementation. Comparisons will display a progress bar, but that only tells how many files of the batch have been hashed so far.
• Version 1.2: Improved multi-threaded progress dialog box so now all operations display a percentage complete. Previous, this only occurred in multi-file comparisons. This is really helpful when hashing really big files (like CD or DVD ISOs or uncompressed video) or comparing multiple large files. Operations can be cancelled by clicking the Cancel button.

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Browse the Documentation

The entire WinHasher 1.2 documentation is here online for your browsing enjoyment. Check out either the Windows GUI help or the console program help.

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