Here’s how it works: Checking a File’s ChecksumĮnsure that you have downloaded a file to your Mac for which you would like to see the checksum.

Once it shows you the checksum for your file, you can then go ahead and compare it with the one that the source website has given you to find out if it was modified or corrupted in the process. Mac users can use the built-in Terminal app to check a file’s checksum which means no third-party app download is required. You could use that output to compare it against a list of leaked passwords in the recent LinkedIn example, but ultimately this can be used to verify any sha1 checksum.While the website that serves you with the checksum may have their own tools to generate checksums, what would you as a general user do to check the checksum of a file on your machine? While we have already covered checking the checksum on Linux and Windows, here is a method for the users who use an Apple Mac. The first thing you should do is change your password on that site, but if you want to see if your password was among those leaked you’d need the SHA1 hash of the password itself. For exaaple, if you use LinkedIn you’ve probably heard by now that a major security breach occurred with over 6.5 million user passwords stolen and leaked to the web. Outside of this example, checking a SHA1 hash is frequently used to verify file or string integrity, which we’ve covered on several occasions before.įor some background, this can be helpful for discovering security issues. This might look something like the following at a Terminal window:

Likewise you can change this to any string, so if you want to check the sha1 hash of “ILoveStarWars81” then that simply plug that into the syntax. That is the sha1 checksum of “yourpassword”, obviously change “yourpassword” to your actual password to see its hash. The output will look something like this:

Launch Terminal and enter the following command: Here is how to check the SHA1 digest of any text string, in this example we’ll use a password but you can use any text string.

How to sha checksum mac