MD5 is no longer recommended as a checksum hash for security reasons, but some legacy programs may still use it. The series of letters and numbers in the result is the checksum: just compare it to the checksum provided by the developer.Īnother popular checksum is SHA256, the kind used by Transmission's team. If your file is called Paint.dmg and it's in the Downloads folder, it would look like this: To find the SHA1 checksum of a file, open a Terminal window and enter the following: SHA-1 is the checksum format used by Apple, among many others. To access this folder in Terminal, use ~/Downloads. Important note: For most people, files will be automatically placed in their downloads folder. Still, it's a useful - and very quick - precaution to take. It's worth mentioning that this is not an infallible process: if a website is compromised, the attacker could've easily changed the checksum as well. If they had verified the checksum before installing, they would've known something was amiss. It's still not clear exactly how the infected download made it onto Transmission's website, but those who received it early in the process have reported that the bad file's checksum didn't match the checksum provided by the Transmission team. Broadly, a checksum is the result of a mathematical calculation run on a particular file - if the file hasn't been altered, the checksum you calculate will match the checksum provided by the developer. This can be a critical final step in preventing malware infections of the sort we saw with Transmission.ĭevelopers often post checksums or hashes alongside the download links for their projects to facilitate this kind of verification. Most savvy computer users know that it's important to be vigilant about where they download software from, but few stop to verify that the file they received is the file they were supposed to receive.
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