Software with a database to lookup hashes of files

Question

Sometimes it happens that an open source project adds files with a wrong license.

For example the C code of a game is GPL-2, but by accident a sound file from a proprietary source was copied to the repository. The repository is then forked several times and after a decade no one knows where the file came from.

This is very difficult to track later without proper tools. Once these files are located it would be trivial to substitute them with free files.

I am looking for a software with a database, where I can enter a SHA512 sum of the file and get its usage.

I have something like this in mind

$ sha512 suspiciousfile.wav
  DEADBEEF..

$ wget http://example.com/DEADBEEF -o -
  Found files with SHA512 DEADBEEF in
  Windows95 media/shutdown.wav

Answer 1

I see your goal.

Unfortunately there is no SHA-256 or SHA-512 checksum database out there for ALL the software created by the mankind.

What you can do is to run a command in PowerShell or Bash and create your own database. Here I'm creating a list of all checksum hash of all my *.PDF inside a folder recursively:

Get-ChildItem -recurse '*.pdf' |Get-FileHash -Algorithm sha256  | Format-Table

If it looks good to you you can now export them unto a CSV file and create your database:

Get-ChildItem -recurse '*.pdf' |Get-FileHash -Algorithm sha256  | Export-Csv .\output.csv

As there is no database of ALL software in the World and their hash you now need a human being that goes to check that checksum.

Or ideally find a way to automate the process creating REST call to the software's official checksum page. Here in example the official checksum page for Notepad++. you can change the URL and find the right software version.