Re: [avr-chat] RFC: Unified Microcontroller Programming File

[Joerg Wunsch]

"Colin O'Flynn" <address@hidden> wrote:

> One more thing - of course .zip files would have a built-in CRC, so
> the added md5sum could be thrown out. That would simplify things
> greatly...

It depends.  CRC is a pretty weak algorithm that is merely intented to
catch transmission errors (but is fairly lightweight in its
calculation).

Cryptographic hashes (MD5, SHA1, MD160) are strong (but slow)
algorithms to improve your degree of trust that nobody manipulated the
files protected by them.

Of course, as both are transfered within the same file, the value of
the cryptographic hash is somewhat questionable.

-- 
cheers, J"org               .-.-.   --... ...--   -.. .  DL8DTL

http://www.sax.de/~joerg/                        NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)