How do I know what a hash means?

Question

We have many strange requests in our magazine for a resource called "09fe503e5898bcba55056542d470a803", for example:

GET /cache/09fe503e5898bcba55056542d470a803 GET /something/cache/09fe503e5898bcba55056542d470a803 GET /something-else/cache/09fe503e5898bcba55056542d470a803 

We don’t have a resource or cache entry called like this, so I don’t understand where these calls come from.

The funny thing is that a Google search in this hash returns a lot of results, as if this hash was somehow special (if I change only one character, the Google result does not come up).

Does anyone know what this means? Is there any way to find out where this hash comes from?

Answer 1

The requested resource is not necessarily a hash - it may just be a random sequence with a fixed byte size encoded in hexadecimal .

If it was a hash, and you had an identified algorithm used to calculate it (MD5, etc.), you could look for some rainbow tables (key databases that map to hashes) to try to determine the key (although I I doubt it will benefit).

The funny thing is that a Google search in this hash returns a lot of results, as if this hash was somehow special (if I change only one character, the Google result does not appear).

An interesting observation, this suggests that the string is shared, but does not refer to the source. Converting a string to text does not show anything meaningful.

Answer 2

I am sure this is a random letter of letters or characters. This seems to be MD5, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Also, what does your site do and does it support your server?

Answer 3

The funny thing is that a Google search in this hash returns a lot of results, as if this hash was somehow special (if I change only one character, the Google result does not appear).

IMO, the hash is not special, that just the same application generates it, as in your case ...