sha1sum
sha1sum is a computer program that calculates and verifies SHA-1 hashes. It is commonly used to verify the integrity of files. It (or a variant) is installed by default in most Linux distributions. Typically distributed alongside sha1sum
are sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum and sha512sum, which use a specific SHA-2 hash function.
The SHA-1 variants are proven vulnerable to collision attacks, and users should use, for example, a SHA-2 variant such as sha256sum instead to prevent tampering by an adversary.[1][2]
It is included in GNU Core Utilities,[3] Busybox,[4] and Toybox.[5] Ports to a wide variety of systems are available, including Microsoft Windows.
Examples
To create a file with an sha1 hash in it, if one is not provided:
$ sha1sum filename [filename2] ... > SHA1SUM
If distributing one file, ".sha1" may be appended to the filename e.g.:
$ sha1sum --binary my-zip.tar.gz > my-zip.tar.gz.sha1
The output contains one line per file of the form "{hash} SPACE (ASTERISK|SPACE) [{directory} SLASH] {filename}
". (Note well, if the hash digest creation is performed in text mode instead of binary mode, then there will be two space characters instead of a single space character and an asterisk.) For example:
$ sha1sum -b my-zip.tar.gz
d5db29cd03a2ed055086cef9c31c252b4587d6d0 *my-zip.tar.gz
$ sha1sum -b subdir/filename2
55086cef9c87d6d031cd5db29cd03a2ed0252b45 *subdir/filename2
To verify that a file was downloaded correctly or that it has not been tampered with:
$ sha1sum -c SHA1SUM
filename: OK
filename2: OK
$ sha1sum -c my-zip.tar.gz.sha1
my-zip.tar.gz: OK
Hash file trees
sha1sum can only create checksums of one or multiple files inside a directory, but not of a directory tree, i.e. of subdirectories, sub-subdirectories, etc. and the files they contain. This is possible by using sha1sum in combination with the find command with the -exec
option, or by piping the output from find into xargs. sha1deep can create checksums of a directory tree.
To use sha1sum with find:
$ find s_* -type f -exec sha1sum '{}' \;
65c23f142ff6bcfdddeccebc0e5e63c41c9c1721 s_1/file_s11
d3d59905cf5fc930cd4bf5b709d5ffdbaa9443b2 s_2/file_s21
5590e00ea904568199b86aee4b770fb1b5645ab8 s_a/file_02
Likewise, piping the output from find into xargs yields the same output:
$ find s_* -type f | xargs sha1sum
65c23f142ff6bcfdddeccebc0e5e63c41c9c1721 s_1/file_s11
d3d59905cf5fc930cd4bf5b709d5ffdbaa9443b2 s_2/file_s21
5590e00ea904568199b86aee4b770fb1b5645ab8 s_a/file_02
Related programs
- shasum is a Perl program to calculate any of SHA-1, 224, 256, 384, 512.[6] It is part of the ActivePerl distribution.
- sha3sum is a similarly named program that calculates SHA-3, HAKE, RawSHAKE and Keccak functions.[7]
- The <hash>sum naming convention is also used by the BLAKE team with
b2sum
andb3sum
, by the programtthsum
, and many others. - On FreeBSD and OpenBSD the utilities are called md5, sha1, sha256, and sha512. These versions offer slightly different options and features. Additionally, FreeBSD offers the "SKEIN" family of message digests.[8]
See also
References
- Bruce Schneier. "Cryptanalysis of SHA-1". Schneier on Security.
- https://security.googleblog.com/2017/02/announcing-first-sha1-collision.html
- https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/sha1sum-invocation.html
- https://github.com/mirror/busybox/blob/a6f8651/testsuite/sha1sum.tests
- https://github.com/landley/toybox/blob/409a8e093a4ea8e0892ab302b4fd433d08f435eb/toys/lsb/md5sum.c#L17
- – Linux General Commands Manual
- – Linux General Commands Manual
- – FreeBSD General Commands Manual