guides
Guides & articles
Practical writing about hash functions, file integrity and verifying downloads, from the people who built the tool.
What is a checksum and why every download page shows one
The long hex string next to a download link is a summary of the file's contents that anyone can recompute. Here is what it proves, where it comes from, and the one thing it cannot tell you.
5 min read
SHA-256 vs SHA-1 vs MD5: which hashes are still safe in 2026
MD5 fell in 2004, SHA-1 in 2017 — but both are still printed on download pages. What broke, what it costs to break it today, and which algorithm belongs in which job.
6 min read
How to verify a download with a checksum on Windows, macOS and Linux
The exact commands for certutil, Get-FileHash, shasum and sha256sum, how to compare two digests without fooling yourself, and what a GPG signature adds on top.
6 min read