How to checksum or verify File Integrity of downloaded Kali Linux using Windows without any software [ Beginners' Guide]

How to check and verify the Kali Linux you downloaded was original or not, this is the
question that may arise in mind for most of the beginners who wish to learn Kali Linux.
This could be because, the official documentation states, always download Kali Linux from Official sources. But, the link that they provide also contains the Torrent link, which most of them use for faster download.

So, what is checksum ?

I dont want to confuse you by explaining such a concept, but let me tell you in a simple words.

Checksum is a kind of digital signature which is used to check whether the file is altered or not. When you download files from Torrents, there are possibilities for the files could be altered. But, when even a single bit was altered in a file, then it would produce different checksum value.


So, its safe to assume that, the file you downloaded was 99.9% unaltered when the checksum value that was generated in your PC matches the value given in the official website.

OK, but how can i check that ?

Checking the file integrity of Kali Linux using Windows was pretty much easy.

Though there are many tools available to check the file integrity, you can check file integrity using the inbuilt tools that are available in Windows 10 or Windows.

Just follow the below steps.

1) Open powershell

2) Navigate to the folder where you downloaded Kali linux.

For example if your Kali is in g drive, then you can navigate to that directory as follows.

For example : cd\

cd g:

cd kali-linux-2017.2-amd64

7) Type certutil -hashfile followed by the ISO name and -sha256 at the end.

For example :

certutil.exe  -hashfile kali-linux-2017.2-amd64.iso -sha256

8) Hit Enter and Wait for sometime,

It will display the checksum value, for example :

4556775bfb981ae64a3cb19aa0b73e8dcac6e4ba524f31c4bc14c9137b99725d

check whether its the one as mentioned on the official

website.

You can also check that using the file provided/downloaded in the same folder.

You will see an file kali-linux-2017.2-amd64.txt.sha256 or something, just right click and open with notepad, you will see the Checksum value.

If it matches with value generated on step 8 or website, then use it, or else kindly delete the file.

That's it.

Enjoy.

Note : The checksum value used in this post was retrieved from kali-linux-2017.2-amd64

So you can verify checksum of kali-linux-2017.2-amd64 using the above steps.