Virus file sums

User defines desired state: in configuration files. System reads desired state: and fetches current state from remote systems via providers. System compares: desired and current states to generate a plan of changes. User reviews and approves: the plan. System executes the plan: via providers, updating remote resources. System updates the state file: to reflect the new current state.

SHA-256 sums and other cryptographic hashes of malicious files are collected and stored in several public databases, often managed by cybersecurity companies and community projects. These databases are key resources for threat intelligence and incident response. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
How these databases are used • Security tools: Antivirus software and other security products check the hashes of files on a system against these databases to identify and block known malware. • Threat intelligence: Security researchers use these databases to track and analyze trends in malware and to identify relationships between different malware families. • Digital forensics: Forensic investigators use malware hash registries to quickly identify and filter malicious files during an investigation, reducing the analysis time. • Hash lookup: You can manually submit a file's hash to a public service to see if it's been identified as malicious by the cybersecurity community. [6, 7, 8, 9]

Key public malware hash databases and services • VirusTotal: A highly-regarded, free online service that analyzes files and URLs for viruses using multiple antivirus engines and other tools. You can search for a file's hash to see previous analysis reports. • Malware Hash Registry (MHR): Maintained by Team Cymru, this is a web form that allows you to submit one or more hashes to check them against their database of malicious files. • Cisco Talos File Reputation Lookup: A file reputation system that allows you to look up a file's SHA-256 hash against their database of billions of files. • Hybrid Analysis: A free malware analysis service that detects and analyzes unknown threats using static analysis, reputation lookups, and AV engines. You can search for hashes that have been previously analyzed. • Community-driven GitHub repositories: Projects like and are community-maintained collections of malicious hashes available for download. • CIRCL hashlookup: A public API to look up hash values against a database of files, which includes the NIST National Software Reference Library (NSRL) as well as malware hashes. [1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15]

Important considerations • Polymorphic and evolving malware: Threat intelligence databases are less effective against polymorphic malware, which can change its code and hash with each infection. For this reason, modern security tools use behavioral analysis in addition to hash-based detection. • Limited scope of free services: While there are excellent free lookup services, many enterprise-level security firms maintain more comprehensive and up-to-date threat intelligence feeds that are not freely available to the public. • The hash isn't everything: A clean hash doesn't guarantee a clean file. An attacker can create a novel piece of malware with a brand-new hash that has not yet been submitted to any database. A clean hash only means that a file with that exact hash hasn't been flagged as malicious yet. [6, 16, 17, 18, 19]

AI responses may include mistakes.

[1] https://crossleydan.medium.com/what-to-do-if-you-find-a-dodgy-file-and-dont-know-what-to-do-343694a5b122[2] https://github.com/aaryanrlondhe/Malware-Hash-Database[3] https://hash.cymru.com/[4] https://www.recordedfuture.com/threat-intelligence-101/intelligence-sources-collection/threat-intelligence-sources[5] https://www.cyberdb.co/the-role-of-cybersecurity-databases-in-modern-incident-response/[6] https://www.malwarepatrol.net/malware-hashes-and-hash-functions/[7] https://www.sei.cmu.edu/blog/detecting-and-grouping-malware-using-section-hashes/[8] https://sleuthkit.org/autopsy/docs/user-docs/3.1/hash_db_page.html[9] https://hash.cymru.com/[10] https://github.com/LGOG/Flagged_Hash_list[11] https://circl.lu/services/hashlookup/[12] https://hash.cymru.com/[13] https://gtidocs.virustotal.com/docs/check-vt[14] https://www.talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation[15] https://hybrid-analysis.com/[16] https://www.team-cymru.com/mhr[17] https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/266109/is-it-enough-to-verify-the-hash-to-ensure-file-is-virus-free[18] https://www.sasa-software.com/learning/what-is-file-hashing-in-cybersecurity/[19] https://www.sentinelone.com/cybersecurity-101/threat-intelligence/what-is-polymorphic-malware/