Compare those results to the checksum provided when you downloaded the file to make sure your app is on the up-and-up. Now hit the Return key, and Terminal will spit out a very long string of letters and numbers. Shasum -a 256 /Users/your_user_name/Downloads/Your-Downloaded-File-1.0.1.dmg That will create a path in the Terminal to that file's home on your hard drive. Now, find the file you want to generate a checksum for in the Finder, and drag and drop it into the Terminal window. Remember to include that final space after whichever number or command you specify! You can also replace everything above with the command md5 if you want to create an MD5 checksum. Open Terminal, and at the prompt, type in:Ĭhange 256 to 1 or 512 if you want to create a SHA-1 or SHA-512 checksum. Doing so after you've opened the file and installed the app somewhat defeats the purpose. Remember, always do this before you open any. How can you validate a checksum? The (slightly more) difficult wayĪ fairly simple Terminal command can produce a checksum for any file on your Mac, which you can then compare against the checksum provided by the app's creators. Users can compare the checksum for the file they download to the one listed on the site to make sure that their copy of the file is the real deal. To keep their users from falling prey to any similar future attacks, Transmission, Handbrake, and many other apps distributed or sold outside the Mac App Store began to include checksums on their download pages next to the download links. And yes, these malicious doppelgängers were aimed specifically at Macs. In 2017, the same thing happened to Handbrake, a well-regarded free app for ripping DVDs and compressing video files. The command-line checksum tools are the following: MD5 checksum tool is called md5sum. You can generate and verify checksums with them. Every Linux distribution comes with tools for various checksum algorithms. In 2016, hackers twice broke into the servers for the popular torrent app Transmission, briefly replacing the real app with variants that either encrypted infected users' files to hold them for ransom, or gave the hackers backdoor access to infected computers. Method 2: Verify checksums via Linux command line.
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