List of file signatures

This is a list of file signatures, data used to identify or verify the content of a file. Such signatures are also known as magic numbers or Magic Bytes.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Many file formats are not intended to be read as text. If such a file is accidentally viewed as a text file, its contents will be unintelligible. However, sometimes the file signature can be recognizable when interpreted as text. The column ISO 8859-1 shows how the file signature appears when interpreted as text in the common ISO 8859-1 encoding, with unprintable characters represented as ..

Hex signature Offset Filename extension Description
23 21
 0 Script or data to be passed to the program following the shebang (#!)
a1 b2 c3 d4
d4 c3 b2 a1
 0 pcap Libpcap File Format[1]
0a 0d 0d 0a
 0 pcapng PCAP Next Generation Dump File Format[2]
ed ab ee db
 0 rpm RedHat Package Manager (RPM) package [3]
53 51 4c 69 74 65 20 66 6f 72 6d 61 74 20 33 00
 0 sqlitedb
sqlite
db		 SQLite Database [4]
53 50 30 31
 0 bin Amazon Kindle Update Package [5]
00
 0 PIC
PIF
SEA
YTR		 IBM Storyboard bitmap file

Windows Program Information File
Mac Stuffit Self-Extracting Archive
IRIS OCR data file

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
 11 PDB PalmPilot Database/Document File
BE BA FE CA
 0 DBA Palm Desktop Calendar Archive
00 01 42 44
 0 DBA Palm Desktop To Do Archive
00 01 44 54
 0 TDA Palm Desktop Calendar Archive
54 44 46 24
 0 TDF$ Telegram Desktop File
54 44 45 46
 0 TDEF Telegram Desktop Encrypted File
00 01 00 00
 0 Palm Desktop Data File (Access format)
00 00 01 00
 0 ico Computer icon encoded in ICO file format[6]
66 74 79 70 33 67
 4 3gp
3g2		 3rd Generation Partnership Project 3GPP and 3GPP2 multimedia files
1F 9D
 0 z
tar.z		 compressed file (often tar zip)

using Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm

1F A0
 0 z
tar.z		 Compressed file (often tar zip)

using LZH algorithm

42 41 43 4B 4D 49 4B 45
44 49 53 4B
 0 bac File or tape containing a backup done with AmiBack on an Amiga.

It typically is paired with an index file (idx) with the table of contents.

42 5A 68
 0 bz2 Compressed file using Bzip2 algorithm
47 49 46 38 37 61
47 49 46 38 39 61
 0 gif Image file encoded in the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)[7]
49 49 2A 00
(little-endian format)
4D 4D 00 2A
(big-endian format)		 0 tif
tiff		 Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)
49 49 2A 00 10 00 00 00
43 52
 0 cr2 Canon RAW Format Version 2[8]
Canon's RAW format is based on TIFF.[9]
80 2A 5F D7
 0 cin Kodak Cineon image
52 4E 43 01
52 4E 43 02
 0 Compressed file using Rob Northen Compression (version 1 and 2) algorithm
53 44 50 58
(big-endian format)
58 50 44 53
(little-endian format)		 0 dpx SMPTE DPX image
76 2F 31 01
 0 exr OpenEXR image
42 50 47 FB
 0 bpg Better Portable Graphics format[10]
FF D8 FF DB

FF D8 FF E0 00 10 4A 46 49 46 00 01

FF D8 FF EE

FF D8 FF E1 ?? ?? 45 78 69 66 00 00
 0 jpg
jpeg		 JPEG raw or in the JFIF or Exif file format
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 49 4C 42 4D
 0

any

 ilbm
lbm
ibm
iff		 IFF Interleaved Bitmap Image
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 38 53 56 58
 0

any

 8svx
8sv
svx
snd
iff		 IFF 8-Bit Sampled Voice
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 43 42 4D
 0

any

 acbm
iff		 Amiga Contiguous Bitmap
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 4E 42 4D
 0

any

 anbm
iff		 IFF Animated Bitmap
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 
41 4E 49 4D
 0

any

 anim
iff		 IFF CEL Animation
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 46 41 58 58
 0

any

 faxx
fax
iff		 IFF Facsimile Image
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 46 54 58 54
 0

any

 ftxt
iff		 IFF Formatted Text
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 53 4D 55 53
 0

any

 smus
smu
mus
iff		 IFF Simple Musical Score
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 43 4D 55 53
 0

any

 cmus
mus
iff		 IFF Musical Score
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 59 55 56 4E
 0

any

 yuvn
yuv
iff		 IFF YUV Image
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 46 41 4E 54
 0

any

 iff Amiga Fantavision Movie
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 49 46 46
 0

any

 aiff
aif
aifc
snd
iff		 Audio Interchange File Format
49 4E 44 58
 0 idx Index file to a file or tape containing a backup done with AmiBack on an Amiga.
4C 5A 49 50
 0 lz lzip compressed file
4D 5A
 0 exe
dll		 DOS MZ executable file format and its descendants (including NE and PE)
50 4B 03 04

50 4B 05 06
(empty archive)
50 4B 07 08
(spanned archive)		 0 zip
aar
apk
docx
epub
ipa
jar
kmz
maff
odp
ods
odt
pk3
pk4
pptx
usdz
vsdx
xlsx
xpi		 zip file format and formats based on it, such as EPUB, JAR, ODF, OOXML
52 61 72 21 1A 07 00
 0 rar RAR archive version 1.50 onwards[11]
52 61 72 21 1A 07 01 00
 0 rar RAR archive version 5.0 onwards[12]
5A 4D
 0 exe DOS ZM executable file format and its descendants (rare)
7F 45 4C 46
 0 Executable and Linkable Format
89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A
 0 png Image encoded in the Portable Network Graphics format[13]
C9
 0 com CP/M 3 and higher with overlays[14]
CA FE BA BE
 0 class Java class file, Mach-O Fat Binary
EF BB BF
 0 UTF-8 encoded Unicode byte order mark, commonly seen in text files.
FE ED FA CE
 0

0x1000

 Mach-O binary (32-bit)
FE ED FA CF
 0

0x1000

 Mach-O binary (64-bit)
FE ED FE ED
 0 JKS JavakeyStore
CE FA ED FE
 0 Mach-O binary (reverse byte ordering scheme, 32-bit)[15]
CF FA ED FE
 0 Mach-O binary (reverse byte ordering scheme, 64-bit)[15]
FF FE
 0 Byte-order mark for text file encoded in little-endian 16-bit Unicode Transfer Format
FF FE 00 00
 0 Byte-order mark for text file encoded in little-endian 32-bit Unicode Transfer Format
25 21 50 53
 0 ps PostScript document
49 54 53 46 03 00 00 00 60 00 00 00
 0 chm MS Windows HtmlHelp Data
25 50 44 46 2d
 0 pdf PDF document[16]
30 26 B2 75 8E 66 CF 11
A6 D9 00 AA 00 62 CE 6C
 0 asf
wma
wmv		 Advanced Systems Format[17]
24 53 44 49 30 30 30 31
 0 System Deployment Image, a disk image format used by Microsoft
4F 67 67 53
 0 ogg
oga
ogv		 Ogg, an open source media container format
38 42 50 53
 0 psd Photoshop Document file, Adobe Photoshop's native file format
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 57 41 56 45
 0 wav Waveform Audio File Format
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 56 49 20
 0 avi Audio Video Interleave video format
FF FB

FF F3

FF F2

 0 mp3 MPEG-1 Layer 3 file without an ID3 tag or with an ID3v1 tag (which's appended at the end of the file)
49 44 33
 0 mp3 MP3 file with an ID3v2 container
42 4D
 0 bmp
dib		 BMP file, a bitmap format used mostly in the Windows world
43 44 30 30 31
 0x8001

0x8801
0x9001

 iso ISO9660 CD/DVD image file[18]
53 49 4D 50 4C 45 20 20
3D 20 20 20 20 20 20 20
20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20
20 20 20 20 20 54
 0 fits Flexible Image Transport System (FITS)[19]
66 4C 61 43
 0 flac Free Lossless Audio Codec[20]
4D 54 68 64
 0 mid
midi		 MIDI sound file[21]
D0 CF 11 E0 A1 B1 1A E1
 0 doc
xls
ppt
msg		 Compound File Binary Format, a container format used for document by older versions of Microsoft Office.[22] It is however an open format used by other programs as well.
64 65 78 0A 30 33 35 00
 0 dex Dalvik Executable
4B 44 4D
 0 vmdk VMDK files[23][24]
43 72 32 34
 0 crx Google Chrome extension[25] or packaged app[26]
41 47 44 33
 0 fh8 FreeHand 8 document[27][28][29]
05 07 00 00 42 4F 42 4F
05 07 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 01
 0 cwk AppleWorks 5 document
06 07 E1 00 42 4F 42 4F
06 07 E1 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 01
 0 cwk AppleWorks 6 document
45 52 02 00 00 00
8B 45 52 02 00 00 00
 0 toast Roxio Toast disc image file, also some .dmg-files begin with same bytes
78 01 73 0D 62 62 60
 0 dmg Apple Disk Image file
78 61 72 21
 0 xar eXtensible ARchive format[30]
50 4D 4F 43 43 4D 4F 43
 0 dat Windows Files And Settings Transfer Repository[31]

See also USMT 3.0 (Win XP)[32] and USMT 4.0 (Win 7)[33] User Guides

4E 45 53 1A
 0 nes Nintendo Entertainment System ROM file[34]
75 73 74 61 72 00 30 30
75 73 74 61 72 20 20 00
 0x101 tar tar archive[35]
4F 41 52 ??
 0 oar OAR file archive format, where ?? is the format version.
74 6F 78 33
 0 tox Open source portable voxel file[36]
4D 4C 56 49
 0 MLV Magic Lantern Video file[37]
44 43 4D 01 50 41 33 30
 0 Windows Update Binary Delta Compression[38]
37 7A BC AF 27 1C
 0 7z 7-Zip File Format
1F 8B
 0 gz
tar.gz		 GZIP compressed file[39]
FD 37 7A 58 5A 00
 0 xz
tar.xz		 XZ compression utility
using LZMA2 compression
04 22 4D 18
 0 lz4 LZ4 Frame Format[40]

Remark: LZ4 block format does not offer any magic bytes.[41]

4D 53 43 46
 0 cab Microsoft Cabinet file
53 5A 44 44 88 F0 27 33
 0 Various. (Replacing the last character of the original filename extension with an underscore, e.g. setup.exe becomes setup.ex_) Microsoft compressed file in Quantum format, used prior to Windows XP. File can be decompressed using Extract.exe or Expand.exe distributed with earlier versions of Windows.
46 4C 49 46
 0 flif Free Lossless Image Format
1A 45 DF A3
 0 mkv
mka
mks
mk3d
webm		 Matroska media container, including WebM
4D 49 4C 20
 0 stg "SEAN : Session Analysis" Training file. Also used in compatible software "Rpw : Rowperfect for Windows" and "RP3W : ROWPERFECT3 for Windows".
41 54 26 54 46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 44 4A 56
 0 djvu
djv		 DjVu document
The following byte is either 55 (U) for single-page or 4D (M) for multi-page documents.
30 82
 0 der DER encoded X.509 certificate
44 49 43 4D
 0x80 dcm DICOM Medical File Format
77 4F 46 46
 0 woff WOFF File Format 1.0
77 4F 46 32
 0 woff2 WOFF File Format 2.0
3c 3f 78 6d 6c 20
 0 XML eXtensible Markup Language when using the ASCII character encoding
00 61 73 6d
 0 wasm WebAssembly binary format[42]
cf 84 01
 0 lep Lepton compressed JPEG image[43]
43 57 53
46 57 53
 0 swf flash .swf
21 3C 61 72 63 68 3E
 0 deb linux deb file
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 57 45 42 50
 0 webp Google WebP image file, where ?? ?? ?? ?? is the file size. More information on WebP File Header
27 05 19 56
 0 U-Boot / uImage. Das U-Boot Universal Boot Loader.[44]
7B 5C 72 74 66 31
 0 rtf Rich Text Format
54 41 50 45
 0 Microsoft Tape Format
47
 0

0xBC

0x178

...

(every 188th byte)

 ts

tsv

tsa

 MPEG Transport Stream (MPEG-2 Part 1)
00 00 01 BA
 0 m2p

vob

 MPEG Program Stream (MPEG-1 Part 1 (essentially identical) and MPEG-2 Part 1)
00 00 01 BA
47
00 00 01 B3
 0 mpg

mpeg

MPEG Program Stream

MPEG Transport Stream

MPEG-1 video and MPEG-2 video (MPEG-1 Part 2 and MPEG-2 Part 2)

00 00 00 20 66 74 79 70 69 73 6F 6D
 4 mp4 ISO Base Media file (MPEG-4)
78 01

78 5E

78 9C

78 DA

78 20

78 7D

78 BB

78 F9

 0 zlib

No Compression (no preset dictionary)

Best speed (no preset dictionary)

Default Compression (no preset dictionary)

Best Compression (no preset dictionary)

No Compression (with preset dictionary)

Best speed (with preset dictionary)

Default Compression (with preset dictionary)

Best Compression (with preset dictionary)

62 76 78 32
 0 lzfse LZFSE - Lempel-Ziv style data compression algorithm using Finite State Entropy coding. OSS by Apple.[45]
4F 52 43
 0 orc Apache ORC (Optimized Row Columnar) file format
4F 62 6A 01
 0 avro Apache Avro binary file format
53 45 51 36
 0 rc RCFile columnar file format
65 87 78 56
 0

p25

obt

 PhotoCap Object Templates
55 55 aa aa
 0 pcv PhotoCap Vector
78 56 34
 0

pbt

pdt

pea

peb

pet

pgt

pict

pjt

pkt

pmt

 PhotoCap Template
50 41 52 31
 0 Apache Parquet columnar file format
45 4D 58 32
 0 ez2 Emulator Emaxsynth samples
45 4D 55 33
 0 ez3

iso

 Emulator III synth samples
1B 4C 75 61
 0 luac Lua bytecode[46]
62 6F 6F 6B 00 00 00 00 6D 61 72 6B 00 00 00 00
 0 alias macOS file Alias[47] (Symbolic link)
5B 5A 6F 6E 65 54 72 61 6E 73 66 65 72 5D
 0 Identifier Microsoft Zone Identifier for URL Security Zones[48]
52 65 63 65 69 76 65 64
 0 eml Email Message var5[49]
20 02 01 62 A0 1E AB 07 02 00 00 00
 0 tde Tableau Datasource
37 48 03 02 00 00 00 00 58 35 30 39 4B 45 59
 0 kdb KDB file
85 ?? ?? 03
 0 pgp PGP file [50]
28 B5 2F FD
 0 zst Zstandard compressed file[51][52]
52 53 56 4B 44 41 54 41
 0 rs QuickZip rs compressed archive[53][54]
3A 29 0A
 0 sml Smile file
4A 6F 79 21
 0 Preferred Executable Format
31 0A 30 30
 0 srt SubRip File
34 12 AA 55
 0 vpk VPK file, used to store game data for some Source Engine games
58 46 49 52
 0 dcr Adobe Shockwave
2A 2A 41 43 45 2A 3A
 0 ace ACE (compressed file format)
60 EA
 0 arj ARJ
49 53 63 28
 0 cab InstallShield CAB Archive File
4B 57 41 4A
 0 ??_ Windows 3.1x Compressed File
53 5A 44 44
 0 ??_ Windows 9x Compressed File
5A 4F 4F
 0 zoo Zoo (file format)
50 31 0A
 0 pbm Portable bitmap
50 32 0A
 0 pgm Portable Gray Map
50 33 0A
 0 ppm Portable Pixmap
D7 CD C6 9A
 0 wmf Windows Metafile
67 69 6D 70 20 78 63 66
 0 xcf XCF (file format)
2F 2A 20 58 50 4D 20 2A 2F
 0 xpm X PixMap
41 46 46
 0 aff Advanced Forensics Format
45 56 46 32
 0 Ex01 EnCase EWF version 2 format
45 56 46
 0 e01 EnCase EWF version 1 format
51 46 49
 0 qcow qcow file format
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ??
41 43 4F 4E
 8 ani Animated cursor
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ??
43 44 44 41
 8 cda Compact Disc Digital Audio
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ??
51 4C 43 4D
 8 qcp Qualcomm PureVoice file format
58 46 49 52 ?? ?? ?? ??
33 39 56 4D
 8 dir Macromedia Director file format
46 4C 56
 0 flv Flash Video file
3C 3C 3C 20 4F 72 61 63 6C 65 20 56 4D 20 56 69 72 74 75 61 6C 42 6F 78 20 44 69 73 6B 20 49 6D 61 67 65 20 3E 3E 3E
 0 vdi VirtualBox Virtual Hard Disk file format
63 6F 6E 6E 65 63 74 69 78
 0 vhd Windows Virtual PC Virtual Hard Disk file format
76 68 64 78 66 69 6C 65
 0 vhdx Windows Virtual PC Windows 8 Virtual Hard Disk file format
49 73 5A 21
 0 isz compressed ISO image
44 41 41
 0 daa Direct Access Archive PowerISO
4C 66 4C 65
 0 evt Windows Event Viewer file format
50 4D 43 43
 0 grp Windows 3.x Program Manager Program Group file format
4B 43 4D 53
 0 icm ICC profile
72 65 67 66
 0 dat Windows Registry file
21 42 44 4E
 0 pst Microsoft Outlook Personal Storage Table file
44 52 41 43 4F
 0 drc 3D model compressed with Google Draco[55]

See also

References
  1. "Libpcap File Format". Retrieved 2018-06-19.
  2. "PCAP Next Generation Dump File Format". Retrieved 2018-06-19.
  3. "A. Format of the RPM file". Retrieved 2017-02-15.
  4. "Database File Format". Retrieved 2018-11-16.
  5. "GitHub - NiLuJe/KindleTool: Tool for creating/extracting Kindle updates and more". Retrieved 2017-02-15.
  6. Icons (at MSDN)
  7. GRAPHICS INTERCHANGE FORMAT(sm) Version 89a
  8. Computer Knowledge. "File Extension .CR2 Details". filext.com.
  9. "Inside the Canon RAW format version 2, understanding .CR2 file format and files produced by Canon EOS Digital Camera". free.fr.
  10. Bellard, Fabrice (2015). "BPG Image format".
  11. "TechNote.txt: RAR version 4.00 - Technical information". 2010-12-01. The marker block is actually considered as a fixed byte sequence: 0x52 0x61 0x72 0x21 0x1a 0x07 0x00 Missing or empty |url= (help)
  12. "RAR 5.0 archive format". Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  13. "RFC 2083 - PNG (Portable Network Graphics) Specification Version 1.0". ietf.org.
  14. Elliott, John C.; Lopushinsky, Jim (2002) [1998-04-11]. "CP/M 3.0 COM file header". Seasip.info. Archived from the original on 2016-08-30. Retrieved 2016-08-29.
  15. "Mac Developer Library". apple.com.
  16. "File command PDF Magic format". Retrieved 2018-11-06.
  17. "ASF (Advanced Systems Format)".
  18. Gary C. Kessler (21 October 2012). "File Signatures Table". Retrieved 28 December 2012.
  19. "Flexible Image Transport System (FITS), Version 3.0 - File type signifiers". 2012-09-26. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
  20. Josh Coalson. "FLAC — format". Retrieved 4 April 2013. "fLaC", the FLAC stream marker in ASCII, meaning byte 0 of the stream is 0x66, followed by 0x4C 0x61 0x43
  21. "File Signature Database: mid File Signatures". filesignatures.net.
  22. "Developing a tool to recognise MS Office file types ( .doc, .xls, .mdb, .ppt )". social.msdn.microsoft.com. Archived from the original on 2014-08-09. Retrieved 2014-07-28.
  23. "What Files Make Up a Virtual Machine?". vmware.com.
  24. http://www.vmware.com/app/vmdk/?src=vmdk
  25. "CRX Package Format". chrome.com.
  26. "CRX Package Format". chrome.com.
  27. "[Pythonmac-SIG] Discovering file type". python.org.
  28. Tim Fisher. "FH8 File - What It Is & How To Open One". About.com Tech.
  29. "Google Groups". google.com.
  30. "xar - xarformat.wiki". code.google.com.
  31. "Easily Restore Your Computer With File and Settings Transfer Wizard XP (Part 1)". howtogeek.com.
  32. "User State Migration Tool 3.0". microsoft.com. Microsoft.
  33. "User State Migration Tool 4.0 User's Guide". microsoft.com. Microsoft.
  34. "NESRomTool::NES ROM Quickstart". sadistech.com.
  35. "GNU tar 1.28: Basic Tar Format". gnu.org.
  36. "UVOX Universal Voxel Translator - Man Page". tox.land. Archived from the original on 2016-05-08. Retrieved 2015-06-29.
  37. "RAW Format v2.0 - Google Sheets". google.com.
  38. "Using Binary Delta Compression (BDC) Technology to Update Windows Operating Systems". Microsoft. 10 June 2005. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  39. "Member header and trailer (RFC 1952, Section 2.3.1)". Retrieved 2018-10-29.
  40. Collet, Yann. "LZ4 Frame format". github.com.
  41. Collet, Yann. "LZ4 Block Format". github.com.
  42. "WebAssembly/design". GitHub. Retrieved 2016-11-01.
  43. "Lepton image compression: saving 22% losslessly from images at 15MB/s". Dropbox.
  44. "How to Extract an uImage". Archived from the original on 2017-02-25. Retrieved 2017-02-24.
  45. "lzfse/lzfse". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-10-16.
  46. Laurie, Dirk (2013). "Lua 5.2 Bytecode and Virtual Machine".
  47. "Mac OS X - ForensicsWiki". www.forensicswiki.org. Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  48. "libyal/libfsntfs". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  49. "File extension details - files How To (by File Extension Seeker)". file-extension.net. Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  50. "gnupg - Is it a coincidence that the first 4 bytes of a PGP/GPG file are ellipsis, smile, female sign and a heart? - Information Security Stack Exchange)". security.stackexchange.com. Retrieved 2020-06-05.
  51. "Zstandard Frames (RFC 8478, Section 3.1.1)". ietf.org. Retrieved 2018-10-29.
  52. "Magic numbering scheme (zstd project issue tracker)". Retrieved 2018-10-29.
  53. "RS File Extension". filext.com. Retrieved 2020-09-18.
  54. "Quickzip.org (WebArchive)". Archived from the original on 2005-04-03. Retrieved 2020-09-18.
  55. "Draco Bitstream Specification". google.github.io. Archived from the original on 2021-01-18. Retrieved 2021-01-18.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.