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I'm trying to understand security and verification a bit more so I've been playing with getting random ISOs and verifying them with md5sum.

For instance if I download the Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 release to ~/Downloads I can run the following:

cd ~/Downloads
md5sum ubuntu-gnome-15.10-desktop-amd64.iso

Which after a brief pause to crunch numbers, gives me the following result:

b89cd1cee3acc2ec174f8d995bd74794  ubuntu-gnome-15.10-desktop-amd64.iso

When I check this against the Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 published MD5 hashes I get something nearly but not quite the same:

b89cd1cee3acc2ec174f8d995bd74794 *ubuntu-gnome-15.10-desktop-amd64.iso
97b49f32a70b46537c34e24e43c16526 *ubuntu-gnome-15.10-desktop-i386.iso

Can anyone explain the origin, meaning or reason for this mysterious "*"?

My understanding is that these are supposed to be identical... the only thing standing between that and me is this wildcard, so what's up with that?

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    You're right to be cautious, though as kos said, the only thing that really matters is that the hashes of the files match. That said, while (as far as I know) there are no practical preimage attacks against MD5, there is a theoretical one, and I believe the general consensus is that, for pure hashes, MD5 should be avoided in favor of SHA (and preferably at least SHA-2). Personally, MD5's theoretical vulnerability is enough to make me use something better whenever possible. Nov 22, 2015 at 0:40
  • It seems to me you could simply have read the documentation? Nov 22, 2015 at 5:30
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    playing with getting random ISOs You sure have a lot of bandwidth to spare...
    – user12205
    Nov 22, 2015 at 8:41
  • @BlacklightShining very interesting links many thanks I'll explore getting to grips with SHA-2 in future.
    – Huw
    Nov 22, 2015 at 11:12
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    @ace :) fringe benefits to filling a hard drive with ISOs due to chronic indecisiveness about ubuntu flavours.
    – Huw
    Nov 22, 2015 at 11:12

2 Answers 2

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It means the hash was calculated in binary mode.

 The default mode is to print a line with checksum, a character indicating type ('*' for binary, ' ' for text), and name for each FILE.

Source

As ISO files are binary, this is what you want.

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    +1 for the explanation of the "*", which I never grasped. However on systems using linefeed line-ending (Ubuntu) there's no difference between text files and binary files, in fact md5sum runs by default in text mode; despite, OP's output hash matches the hash calculated in binary mode.
    – kos
    Nov 21, 2015 at 16:49
  • Fantastic, great answers from both you and @kos that explains what's going on and sets my mind at ease that I'm not getting md5 hashes wrong. Many thanks.
    – Huw
    Nov 22, 2015 at 11:07
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Verifying Ubuntu ISO with `md5sum` - does the missing "*" matter?

No.

In the output of md5sum the first column lists the calculated MD5 sum(s) and the second column lists the filename(s) corresponding to the calculated MD5 sum(s) listed on the left column;

The second column is irrelevant for the purpose of checking the MD5 sum of a file because it's just a mere report of the name of the file corresponding to the calculated MD5 sum reported on the first column. In Ubuntu a present or a missing leading "*" is irrelevant, however the previous statement is not correct: see Louis Matthijssen's answer for an explanation of the difference between a missing and a present leading "*".

The filename is a filesystem metadata and has nothing to do with the "raw" file, which is the only thing really checked (and really relevant) when checking the MD5 sum of a file;

You could rename your ISO foo.iso and its MD5 sum would still match b89cd1cee3acc2ec174f8d995bd74794, which means that the file matches the expected MD5 sum.

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