Reference Data Set
The NSRL collects software from various sources and computes message digests, or cryptographic hash values, from them. The digests are stored in the Reference Data Set (RDS) which can be used to identify "known" files on digital media. This will help alleviate much of the effort involved in determining which files are important as evidence on computers or file systems that have been seized as part of criminal investigations. Although the RDS hashset contains some malicious software (such as steganography and hacking tools) it does not contain illicit material (e.g. indecent images).
The collection of original software media is maintained in order to provide repeatability of the calculated hash values, ensuring admissibility of this data in court.
In 2004 the NSRL released a set of hashes for verifying eVoting software, as part of the US Election Assistance Commission's Electronic Voting Security Strategy.
As of June 1 2010 the Reference Data Set is at version 2.29 and contains over 17 million unique hash values. The data set is available at no cost to the public.
Read more about this topic: National Software Reference Library
Famous quotes containing the words reference, data and/or set:
“If we define a sign as an exact reference, it must include symbol because a symbol is an exact reference too. The difference seems to be that a sign is an exact reference to something definite and a symbol an exact reference to something indefinite.”
—William York Tindall (1903–1981)
“This city is neither a jungle nor the moon.... In long shot: a cosmic smudge, a conglomerate of bleeding energies. Close up, it is a fairly legible printed circuit, a transistorized labyrinth of beastly tracks, a data bank for asthmatic voice-prints.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits.”
—Greil Marcus (b. 1945)