[chadkeck]

Hey Thomas, The itch I was scratching with this tool is that there isn't a built-in way in Windows to get a digest of a file, so... what better way than doing it in the browser?

Also, I'm the paranoid type and don't like the idea of uploading a file to someone else's server if I want the digest.

[tptacek]

You aren't worried that doing this via Javascript will make it insecure for that use? In almost the same manner as uploading your file to a server (simply to get the hash) would be?

[chadkeck]

I dont' really understand what you're saying here. Other services that calculate the digest of a file online require you to upload your file to the service/site where you don't know what they will do with it. With Browser Hash, not one bit of your file leaves your computer or travels over the network.

[Zash]

In this world where everything is done through a browser, where would I drop my files from?

On a serious note, can one drop an attachment from say gmail onto that?

And dear someone, please tell me that sha1sum & friends exists for Windows!

[chadkeck]

1. Haha, I agree that files will eventually become less accesible for the majority of computer users. Something like how the iPad handles projects/songs/documents instead of the generic "file".

2. Due to HTML5 limitations, you will need to drop the file from your local storage onto the browser window.

3. Yes you can get digests of a file on Windows, but it doesn't come with a built-in program.

[thirsteh]

This could be useful to validate large files after downloading them, e.g. ISO files for Linux distributions--however that goes out the window with the 10MB size limit.

Why the limit? Does it take too long to compute hashes for larger files?

[chadkeck]

Absolutely agreed. It is due to the immaturity of the browser implementations, which will hopefully be fixed soon.

It regularly crashes(!) Chrome on "large" files; thus, the limitation.