Particl Wiki / Tutorials & Howtos / Security / Verify integrity of downloads Edit this page

Verify integrity of downloads

Validating downloads makes sure you have what the developers released – and not installing any fake or malware-infected software

About checksums

While compiling from source is the recommended and most secure way to build the Particl platform, the team realizes this is an advanced technique that a large number of users aren’t comfortable with. For most users, each release is distributed with source code and pre-compiled distributions for Windows, Mac & Linux.

For Particl Core, the latest release can be found here: https://github.com/particl/particl-core/releases/latest

For Particl Desktop, the latest release can be found here: https://github.com/particl/particl-desktop/releases/latest

For Particl Electrum, the latest release can be found here: https://github.com/particl/particl-electrum/releases/latest

To ensure the highest level of security, the Particl Project team provides sha256sums for all of these releases.

You should generate the sha256sum of your downloaded file, and make sure it matches with the sha256 hashes listed on the corresponding release pages above.

It is recommended to always validate the Particl build releases with the provided sha256sums.

Validating checksums

There are a number of hash generators online, this tutorial will highlight Hash Online Convert:

  1. Download preferred Particl release from GitHub e.g. Windows client
  2. Visit Hash Online Convert
  3. Find Or upload and generate a SHA-256 checksum of a file: section
  4. Select Choose File button
  5. Find downloaded Particl release file
  6. Select Open button
  7. Select Convert file button
  8. Hash converter: File gets submitted to the website and loads a new page showing “Your hash has been successfully generated." This page shows the hash of the uploaded file in a variety of hash outputs; hex, HEX, h:e:x & base64 – value to look for: hex

Or, you can manually genearate the sha256 checksum in terminal.

  1. Open terminal.
  2. Type in:
certUtil -hashfile C:\Users\<your username>\Downloads\<file name of downloaded Particl Release> SHA256

Most Linux distributions come with the sha256sum by default

Generate the sha256sum in terminal:

cd /home/<your username>/Downloads

sha256sum <file name of downloaded Particl Release>
  1. Open terminal
  2. type in:
shasum -a 256 

(with a space after the 6) then drag the file from your downloads folder into terminal, and it will write the file path for you, so you do not have to.

Alternately, you can write:

cd /Users/<your username>/Downloads

shasum -a 256 <file name of downloaded Particl Release>

Updated