Hashing advice requested

2008-11-05, 14:54 by Keshire

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LittleCodingFox

2008-12-07, 08:26 #1

Member since Nov 2008 · 34 posts
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Subject: Hashing advice requested

Sorry for making a non-fable thread, but i dont really want to post this on gamedev-related forums since lately everyone on those forums is either too busy posting crap-based replies, or too busy to notice anything i post.

I'm working on a project of my own, think about it as a MMORPG-sized single-player RPG w/ minimal life simulation, and i'm about to work on client/server stuff, and i'm in need of a proper file checksum algorithm so i can receive hashes from the client to the server in order to verify that the client has all the needed files and that none are damaged/modified.

For those wondering, i need networking because the world simulation is quite CPU-intensive, so i'll make an exe exclusively for world simulation.

CRC cannot be used, since it's possible to make fake CRCs for files, even if the client by default doesnt know the checksums, and MD5 seems to have it's own collisions issues.

So, does anybody know of any good checksum algorithms i could use, preferably something that doesnt force me to pay licensing/royalties?

Thanks a lot for your time regarding this message.

This post was edited on 2013-11-21, 09:19 by Keshire.

TodX Administrator 2008-12-13, 01:55 #2

Member since Oct 2008 · 16 posts · Location: San Diego
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MD5 will be sufficient to detect file damage and modification. Generating MD5 collisions is pretty easy, true, but not for a particular file. Most likely if some one is trying to modify the game and they are that serious about it, they'll just modify the exe to send the hash values the server expects. This can be done by using a nonmodified copy of the file to generate the hash, but have the game engine actually load a modified file, or just have it read the precomputed hash values from from an outside file. But if you still want to try for something more secure, there's always the SHA hash functions, I don't believe I've heard of anyone that's made much progress against those.

LittleCodingFox

2008-12-13, 03:09 #3

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From the information i've seen on wikipedia, SHA-1 has collisions, SHA-2 has a collision at the 2^64th attack, and SHA-256/224/384/512 ones have no collisions at all.

But if the .exe can be modified, then this wont do much anyhow, since, as you said, they can just get the hashes for the original files and send those hashes instead of the loaded files.

I wonder what i should do to be able to detect that sort of issue. But i wont bother too much with security, else i'll probably get my game unplayable or never work on the game because i'll be too busy with security.

Thanks for your help, TodX!

LittleCodingFox

2008-12-15, 01:13 #4

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Well, i just had a fancy idea.

Add a specific extra piece of data to the beginning of the data sent for MD5 generation, so they cant generate a proper MD5 out of the original files.

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