On many occasions, due to our needs, We download and install different programs and applications on our computers to be able to carry out our day-to-day tasks. We always have to insist that the origin of these files must be legitimate, to prevent information theft, malware or performance failures in our computers. But… How can we ensure that our apps come from legitimate sites??
Begin with, you have to know the concept of Digital Signature, Hash by name. This digital signature will help us to verify that our file is legitimate. This firm is, simply, A summary of the file. This summary can be calculated using different mathematical algorithms, and the result is a fixed sequence of letters and numbers, for the file we just processed. This sequence of characters will always be the same length, regardless of how large the file is.
Commonly, the legitimate developers provide the value of this Hash next to the file download link. So that once we have downloaded it we can check it easily.
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| Android Studio Software Example. He shows us the file (2ª Column) and his signature (Last column) |
I have my file and my signature, ¿now what?
This is where signature generator programs come in. DeadHash is one of them. With this little tool, we can upload a file and it will calculate the hash. Once the process is finished, we simply have to compare the newly calculated signature with the signature provided by the developer.
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| On the initial screen we will upload our file |
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| Here are the results, for various calculation algorithms. |
The process will take more or less depending on the size of the file.
In short,, Today we have learned one more method to ensure the security of our information and, above all, that the files we are going to use are authentic and have not been altered by any entity. We always insist on the use of antivirus and the latest updates provided by the developers. On today's occasion we have learned about a tool that will help us to complete the process of avoiding threats that compromise our data and systems.
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