OSX Vs. Windows Case Study

The purpose of an MD5 checksum utility is to verify the hashes of ISO images that have been downloaded from the internet. The reason for doing such a task is you (user) to know that the downloaded image has not been tampered or changed in any way. Usually many websites that provide a software will have a hash shown for you to compare these hashes once you have downloaded the image. This leads you to know that the software is safe to install on your computer without the fear of viruses, worms, etc that can affect your computer.
On the contrary, these utilities or small programs are not usually installed on the system out of the box and are not solely to check for ISO images. There may be certain files you may want to check to make sure during
The user can conclude the image is safe to install on their windows machine without the fear of damaging their device. Using the windows version, I can for sure say is a little complicated compared to the OSX version.

OSX vs Windows

When comparing both of these operating systems, both of them have their pros and cons. I can say with certainly that the OSX is much easier to perform this operation. You are not required to install a separate program and can easily be used using “disk utility” or through the command line by typing “md5” with a space and the path for the file you are checking. If you wanted to use SHA1 you would use the command “shasum” followed by a space and the path for the file. However, by default both applications use MD5. Windows does not allow the user to perform checksum without downloading a separate application that can run through the command line. In command line, you would type “fciv.exe” followed by the name of the file NOT the path unless you use the command “-add” followed by the path or directory. In windows, you have to work a little more to perform this operation, but is a not a complete deal breaker.

MD5 in Incident
Many businesses have weak policies or procedures that cover how to respond when they are attacked, leaving them in denial when their information has been corrupted or stolen. According to an article from TechTarget says, “Incident preparation helps enterprise maintain control and efficient responses during chaotic incident response moments.” They further explain in the article the numerous steps to take in preparation from an attack. So, a good way MD5 checksum could come in handy is when you establish a baseline. In order to do this is by performing an inventory of all critical system files and obtaining their MD5 checksums. After an incident occurs, you validate the data by comparing the hash values and see if the data’s integrity is still the same. You can see why MD5 can be a good percussion to do if an attack was to