Digests
A so-called digest is, similar to a checksum, a characteristic number used for verification of data authenticity. But digests are more than that: digests are strong one-way hash codes.
It is computationally feasible to manipulate any data in such a way that its checksum remains unaffected. Verifying the checksum in such a case would lead to the assumption that the data has not been changed, although it has. Therefore, digests are used instead of checksums if malicious (i.e. not mere random) modifications to the original data are to be detected. It is computationally infeasible to find any data that corresponds to a given digest. It is even computationally infeasible to find two pieces of data that correspond to the same digest.
Of course, random modifications, e. g. caused by an inaccurate transmission, can also be detected when using digests, but checksums serve better for this purpose, because they can be calculated much faster.
WinHex can compute the following digests: MD4, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, RipeMD-128, RipeMD-160, Tiger128, Tiger160, Tiger192 as well as TTH (Tiger Tree Hash) and ed2k (specialist and forensic licenses only).