MD5 File? Need Help...

[lonebyrd 0]

I have posted this somewhere before a while back, but seemed to get nowhere. I looked in the search, but it kept giving me an error. I'm not exactly sure how to use search. Anyway, I accidently changed the program that opens MD5 files. Someone told me to go to Start>Control Panel>Folder Options>File Types and find the MD5 file and just restore it to it's default. Well, there is no option for that. I was just wondering if someone could go to folder options and tell me what it is that opens it. I am trying to download XAMMP, but it is in MD5 form. I am not computer literate enough to figure out all this checksum stuff that comes up when I google it. I hope someone can help.

[Houdini 0]

MD5 is not a file type it is an algorithm to encode files and or words.
From Wikipedia:

ApplicationsMD5 digests have been widely used in the software world to provide some assurance that a downloaded file has not been altered. A user can compare a published MD5 sum with the checksum of a downloaded file. Now that it is easy to generate MD5 collisions, though, it is possible for the person who creates the file to create a second file with the same checksum, so this technique cannot protect against some forms of malicious tampering. It is also often the case that the checksum cannot be trusted (for example, it was obtained over the same channel as the downloaded file), in which case MD5 can only provide error-checking functionality: it will recognize a corrupt or incomplete download, which becomes more likely when downloading larger files.

MD5 is widely used to store passwords, see Password#Form_of_stored_passwords. A number of MD5 reverse lookup databases exist, which make it easy to decrypt password hashed with plain MD5. To prevent such attacks you can add a salt to your passwords before hashing them. Also, it is a good idea to apply the hashing function (MD5 in this case) more than onceâsee key strengthening. It increases the time needed to encrypt a password and discourages dictionary attacks.

XAMPP is just a windows installation program for Apache MySQL PHP and Perl. Just download it and run the install, you won't find a means of dealing with MD5 except using to encode passwords using PHP or other languages PHP would look like
From PHP manual.

$str = 'apple';
if (md5($str) === '1f3870be274f6c49b3e31a0c6728957f') {
echo "Would you like a green or red apple?";
exit;
}

the md5() function produces a 32 bit hexidecimal hash. So just download the XAMPP and run your install and not really worry about the md5 at this moment.

[lonebyrd 0]

O.K. I don't know what the problem was, but it gave me a hard time trying to download XAMMP with Firefox, but I did it with Internet Explorer just fine. Just one more reason why I make sure I keep IE, and only check out what FF has to offer.

[moonwitch1405241479 0]

Actually I know exactly what you are talking about. On the XAMPP download page, you will see this.

XAMPP Windows 1.5.1[basic package] BLAH BLAH BLAH
Installer [MD5] 29 MB Installer
ZIP [MD5] 77 MB ZIP archive
EXE (7-zip) [MD5] 26 MB Selfextracting 7-ZIP archive

Anyhow, if you check, you'll see the MD5 link upon hover over will show the link to xampp.exe.md5 (in the status bar), this is the CHECKSUM for that file - to check if you downloaded the correct and complete file etc. The link next to MD5 will be "Installer" and let's you download a file ending in .exe That's the file you need, not the MD5 file.

It is not a Firefox/IE problem, just poorly placed links to different files.

[sparx 0]

A very succinct explanation provided by Houdini !MD5 is what is termed in crypto-speak as a hash. It's used to verify the contents and integrity of a file (usually archives or installation setups) to ensure that the file that you have on your disk is exactly the same as it's intended to be. Even a single byte change will result in a different has being computed. If the hash of the file you get is different from the has listed, you know that the file isn't the original. Either some corruption has taken place while downloading/storing or there has been some intentional tampering or the hash has been incorrectly calculated.MD5 as a hash is going out the window now because of vulnerabilities found in its algorithm in 1996. For security / encryption, the newer SHA-1 hash is/was being used, although some flaws were found in it too in 2004 ensuring that the more paranoid amongst us have switched over to other hashes like RIPEMD160 and the upcoming SHA512. Each of these hashes has a greater length as they have more number of bits:MD5 - 128 bit - near obsoleteSHA1- 160 bit but flaws and collisions have made this now unreliable!RIPEMD160 - 160 bit and holding against brute force attacks (but just barely)SHA512 - the way forward...