# MD5 Checksums For Different Versions Of Mathematica

I have found older versions of mathematica both online and in stores like ebay but it has always concerned me if the version was real.

Could we create a list of md5 checksums or sum equivalent for X.0.0 version of Mathematica?

I'm really interested in the really old versions of Mathematica that can't be found anymore but I'm not sure who might have those available.

EDIT: Now I'm sure its okay to post the md5 checksums but I'm curious the legality of hosting the actual installers on my own github or site

• Note that md5 checksums are not very reliable anymore. From its wiki page: "Although MD5 was initially designed to be used as a cryptographic hash function, it has been found to suffer from extensive vulnerabilities. It can still be used as a checksum to verify data integrity, but only against unintentional corruption". Unfortunately providing unsigned checksums on a site leads people to believe that checking such a checksum is the main measure against intentional data corruption, but again it is not. – Jacob Akkerboom Oct 11 '16 at 7:51
• So my point is that if we are going to do this, we should post other cryptographic hashes, possibly alongside the md5 ones. – Jacob Akkerboom Oct 11 '16 at 7:52
• Another thing to note is that changing a file like KeyEventTranslations.tr will change the checksum. – Jacob Akkerboom Oct 11 '16 at 7:53
• @Jacob I don't understand how your second link applies. The point there is that an MD5 hash should be considered as compromised as the file (security-wise) if obtained from the same source. The point here is to create a trusted repository (or as trusted as this community) of hashes, which can be protected with https in transit. – Emilio Pisanty Oct 11 '16 at 15:12
• That said, I'm not sure how strong MD5 is to chosen-prefix collision searches, particularly where the 'prefix' is the full MM .exe installer, possibly with some malware attached. If the ebay seller can modify the installer and then add junk that will make the hash match that from the original file, then that is the main worry. – Emilio Pisanty Oct 11 '16 at 15:14

## 2 Answers

Here are the checksums I have on my User Portal for 10.0.2, 10.3.1, 10.4.1 and 11.0.1 on Windows. Someone could gather these for macOS and Linux similarly.

So it appears sha256 is safer but to start the list I have started doing MD5 checksums on some of my installers.

powershell windows
certUtil -hashfile .\file MD5

Name                        MD5
Mathematica_8.0.4_LINUX.sh  02 d4 61 9b 55 c1 d1 28 9d e6 51 fd f8 96 d2 9a
Mathematica_9.0.1_WIN.exe   e1 9f 28 eb 42 ab ca 2c a5 77 b1 ff 4c 74 ce b2
Mathematica_9.0.1_LINUX.sh  7f cb c4 d1 48 87 57 b1 0e f0 77 40 ac 30 a5 80
Mathematica_10.0.0_LINUX.sh 5c 77 12 ee 4e ac cd 60 7c ea 26 a3 26 db 7c 30
Mathematica_11.0.1_LINUX.sh 44 4f 09 6c 9e 05 8d 8a 4f 85 55 c0 6c cc 02 33
Mathematica_11.0.1_WIN.zip  40 5b 45 4e 3c b4 e5 dd ab 0e b7 7e 4d 14 b6 f4
Mathematica_11.0.1_WIN.zip  66 8c 8c 96 85 15 10 a2 04 99 51 89 98 09 9b 63

• SInce you're at it: apart from MD5, SHA-1 is another common checksum used for file integrity checking, so you might want to generate those too. – J. M.'s technical difficulties Oct 12 '16 at 1:23