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Digest(3pm) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Digest(3pm)

NAME

Digest - Modules that calculate message digests

SYNOPSIS

$md5 = Digest->new("MD5");

$sha1 = Digest->new("SHA-1");

$sha256 = Digest->new("SHA-256");

$sha384 = Digest->new("SHA-384");

$sha512 = Digest->new("SHA-512");

$hmac = Digest->HMACMD5($key);

DESCRIPTION

The "Digest::" modules calculate digests, also called "fingerprints" or

"hashes", of some data, called a message. The digest is (usually) some small/fixed size string. The actual size of the digest depend of the algorithm used. The message is simply a sequence of arbitrary bytes or bits. An important property of the digest algorithms is that the digest is likely to change if the message change in some way. Another property

is that digest functions are one-way functions, that is it should be

hard to find a message that correspond to some given digest. Algo-

rithms differ in how "likely" and how "hard", as well as how efficient they are to compute. Note that the properties of the algorithms change over time, as the algorithms are analyzed and machines grow faster. If your application for instance depends on it being "impossible" to generate the same digest for a different message it is wise to make it easy to plug in stronger algorithms as the one used grow weaker. Using the interface documented here should make it easy to change algorithms later.

All "Digest::" modules provide the same programming interface. A func-

tional interface for simple use, as well as an object oriented inter-

face that can handle messages of arbitrary length and which can read files directly. The digest can be delivered in three formats: binary This is the most compact form, but it is not well suited for printing or embedding in places that can't handle arbitrary data. hex A twice as long string of lowercase hexadecimal digits. base64 A string of portable printable characters. This is the base64 encoded representation of the digest with any trailing padding

removed. The string will be about 30% longer than the binary

version. MIME::Base64 tells you more about this encoding. The functional interface is simply importable functions with the same name as the algorithm. The functions take the message as argument and return the digest. Example:

use Digest::MD5 qw(md5);

$digest = md5($message);

There are also versions of the functions with "hex" or "base64" appended to the name, which returns the digest in the indicated form. OOOO IINNTTEERRFFAACCEE

The following methods are available for all "Digest::" modules:

$ctx = Digest->XXX($arg,...)

$ctx = Digest->new(XXX => $arg,...)

$ctx = Digest::XXX->new($arg,...)

The constructor returns some object that encapsulate the state of

the message-digest algorithm. You can add data to the object and

finally ask for the digest. The "XXX" should of course be replaced by the proper name of the digest algorithm you want to use. The two first forms are simply syntactic sugar which automatically load the right module on first use. The second form allow you to use algorithm names which contains letters which are not legal perl

identifiers, e.g. "SHA-1". If no implementation for the given

algorithm can be found, then an exception is raised.

If new() is called as an instance method (i.e. $ctx->new) it will

just reset the state the object to the state of a newly created object. No new object is created in this case, and the return

value is the reference to the object (i.e. $ctx).

$otherctx = $ctx->clone

The clone method creates a copy of the digest state object and returns a reference to the copy.

$ctx->reset

This is just an alias for $ctx->new.

$ctx->add( $data, ... )

The $data provided as argument are appended to the message we cal-

culate the digest for. The return value is the $ctx object itself.

$ctx->addfile( $iohandle )

The $iohandle is read until EOF and the content is appended to the

message we calculate the digest for. The return value is the $ctx

object itself.

$ctx->addbits( $data, $nbits )

$ctx->addbits( $bitstring )

The bits provided are appended to the message we calculate the

digest for. The return value is the $ctx object itself.

The two argument form of addbits() will add the first $nbits bits

from data. For the last potentially partial byte only the high

order "$nbits % 8" bits are used. If $nbits is greater than

"length($data) * 8", then this method would do the same as

"$ctx->add($data)", that is $nbits is silently ignored.

The one argument form of addbits() takes a $bitstring of "1" and

"0" chars as argument. It's a shorthand for

"$ctx->addbits(pack("B*", $bitstring), length($bitstring))".

This example shows two calls that should have the same effect:

$ctx->addbits("111100001010");

$ctx->addbits("\xF0\xA0", 12);

Most digest algorithms are byte based. For those it is not possi-

ble to add bits that are not a multiple of 8, and the addbits() method will croak if you try.

$ctx->digest

Return the binary digest for the message. Note that the "digest" operation is effectively a destructive,

read-once operation. Once it has been performed, the $ctx object is

automatically "reset" and can be used to calculate another digest

value. Call $ctx->clone->digest if you want to calculate the

digest without reseting the digest state.

$ctx->hexdigest

Same as $ctx->digest, but will return the digest in hexadecimal

form.

$ctx->b64digest

Same as $ctx->digest, but will return the digest as a base64

encoded string. DDiiggeesstt ssppeeeedd

This table should give some indication on the relative speed of differ-

ent algorithms. It is sorted by throughput based on a benchmark done with of some implementations of this API: Algorithm Size Implementation MB/s

MD4 128 Digest::MD4 v1.3 165.0

MD5 128 Digest::MD5 v2.33 98.8

SHA-256 256 Digest::SHA2 v1.1.0 66.7

SHA-1 160 Digest::SHA v4.3.1 58.9

SHA-1 160 Digest::SHA1 v2.10 48.8

SHA-256 256 Digest::SHA v4.3.1 41.3

Haval-256 256 Digest::Haval256 v1.0.4 39.8

SHA-384 384 Digest::SHA2 v1.1.0 19.6

SHA-512 512 Digest::SHA2 v1.1.0 19.3

SHA-384 384 Digest::SHA v4.3.1 19.2

SHA-512 512 Digest::SHA v4.3.1 19.2

Whirlpool 512 Digest::Whirlpool v1.0.2 13.0

MD2 128 Digest::MD2 v2.03 9.5

Adler-32 32 Digest::Adler32 v0.03 1.3

CRC-16 16 Digest::CRC v0.05 1.1

CRC-32 32 Digest::CRC v0.05 1.1

MD5 128 Digest::Perl::MD5 v1.5 1.0

CRC-CCITT 16 Digest::CRC v0.05 0.8

These numbers was achieved Apr 2004 with ActivePerl-5.8.3 running under

Linux on a P4 2.8 GHz CPU. The last 5 entries differ by being pure perl implementations of the algorithms, which explains why they are so slow.

Digest::Adler32, Digest::CRC, Digest::Haval256, Digest::HMAC,

Digest::MD2, Digest::MD4, Digest::MD5, Digest::SHA, Digest::SHA1,

Digest::SHA2, Digest::Whirlpool

New digest implementations should consider subclassing from

Digest::base.

MIME::Base64 AUTHOR Gisle Aas

The "Digest::" interface is based on the interface originally developed

by Neil Winton for his "MD5" module. This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.