In cryptography and computer science Hash trees or Merkle trees are a type of data structure which contains a tree of summary information about a larger piece of data – for instance a file – used to verify its contents. Hash trees are an extension of hash lists, which in turn are an extension of hashing. Hash trees where the underlying hash function is Tiger are often called Tiger trees or Tiger tree hashes.
Hash trees can be used to protect any ...
more
In cryptography and computer science Hash trees or Merkle trees are a type of data structure which contains a tree of summary information about a larger piece of data – for instance a file – used to verify its contents. Hash trees are an extension of hash lists, which in turn are an extension of hashing. Hash trees where the underlying hash function is Tiger are often called Tiger trees or Tiger tree hashes.
Hash trees can be used to protect any kind of data stored, handled and transferred in and between computers. Currently the main use of hash trees is to make sure that data blocks received from other peers in a peer-to-peer network are received undamaged and unaltered, and even to check that the other peers do not lie and send fake blocks. Suggestions have been made to use hash trees in trusted computing systems. Sun Microsystems has used Hash Trees in the ZFS filesystem. Hash Trees are used in Google Wave protocol and in tarsnap backup system.
Hash trees were invented in 1979 by...
less