Suggestion to add MD5 Hash values to plugin and your site

The reason for this suggestion is to ease the workload of site admins, as well as that of anyone that performs file analysis. Files can be more easily tracked everywhere if they include an MD5 hash.

When this plugin detects possible malware issues users are notified by email. The email indicates if the scanned files ‘failed’ or are ‘unknown’. In any case, each file in the email contains an MD5 hash of that file.

Anywhere else you look in the plugin or on their site in your logs, this MD5 hash is nowhere to be found. Why is that important?

Consider that submitting a file for analysis can result in a wait of at least several days, to more than a week (more common), and sometimes you get no response at all unless and until you initiate contact with their support staff.

If the service would simply keep a record of all analyzed files, storing just one time for each analyzed and safe file the name, size, date the file was last modified, and MD5 hash, then the platform could quickly compare files submitted for analysis with these entries and automatically reply that the file is safe. Much faster!

I know of concerns where MD5 hashes can “collide”; however if the hash is combined with one or more additional pieces of the data mentioned above the odds are extremely remote.