The National Software Reference Library (NSRL), is a project of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) which maintains a repository of known software, file profiles and file signatures for use by law enforcement and other organizations involved with computer forensic investigations.

The project is supported by the United States Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Defense Computer Forensics Laboratory (DCFL), the U.S. Customs Service, software vendors, and state and local law enforcement.

[3] Although the RDS hashset contains some malicious software (such as steganography and hacking tools) it does not contain illicit material (e.g. indecent images).

The collection of original software media is maintained in order to provide repeatability of the calculated hash values, ensuring admissibility of this data in court.

In 2004 the NSRL released a set of hashes for verifying eVoting software, as part of the US Election Assistance Commission's Electronic Voting Security Strategy.