Security News > 2022 > September > This image contains its own MD5 checksum — and it's kind of a big deal
Generating checksums-cryptographic hashes such as MD5 or SHA-256 functions for files is hardly anything new and one of the most efficient means to ascertain the integrity of a file, or to check if two files are identical.
Generating a file containing its own checksum as part of its content is a task quite daunting, if not seemingly impossible due to a paradox involved in the process.
That has not stopped a researcher from creating a PNG image that contains the file's MD5 checksum, visible within the matrix of pixels that make up the image.
The idea is that any minor change occurring to the original file or piece of data will alter its checksum indicating that the integrity of the data is now void.
For any file you may have or create, you can trivially calculate its MD5 checksum on your PC, Mac, or another device.
You need the checksum or hash of a file first to include this information within the content of the file itself.