National Software Reference Library
 | |
| Abbreviation | NSRL |
|---|---|
| Type | GO |
Parent organization | NIST |
| Website | http://www.nsrl.nist.gov/ |
The National Software Reference Library (NSRL), a project of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is supported by the United States Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice, federal, state, and local law enforcement, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The group maintains a Reference Data Set of known software hashes.
In 2004 the NRSL released a set of hashes for verifying eVoting software, as part of the US Election Assistance Commission's Electronic Voting Security Strategy.[1]
Reference Data Set
The NSRL collects software from various sources and computes message digests from them. The digests are stored in the Reference Data Set (RDS) which can be used to identify "known" files on digital media. This will help alleviate much of the effort involved in determining which files are important as evidence on computers or file systems that have been seized as part of criminal investigations.[2] Although the RDS hashset contains some malicious software (such as steganography and hacking tools) it does not contain illicit material (e.g. indecent images).
NIST maintains a collection of original software media in order to provide repeatability of the calculated hash values, ensuring admissibility of this data in court.
As of June 1 2010 the Reference Data Set is at version 2.29 and contains over 17 million unique hash values. The data set is available at no cost to the public.[3]
See also
References
- ^ Verton, Dan. "Feds Issue Test Copies of E-voting Software". Computer World. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^ Steve Mead (2006). "Unique file identification in the National Software Reference Library". Digital Investigation. 3 (3): 138–150. doi:10.1016/j.diin.2006.08.010. ISSN 1742-2876Zsoi=10.1016/j.diin.2006.08.010.
{{cite journal}}: Check|issn=value (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ [RDS Readme.txt "http://www.nsrl.nist.gov/RDS/rds_2.29/READ_ME.txt"]. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
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