Comments on: How to Generate and Verify MD5 Checksums in Linux [5 Methods]

By: Ravi Saive

Ravi Saive — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:31:01 +0000

In reply to BLewis. @Blewis, Fair point, you’re right. A checksum is for integrity, not security, and MD5 is cryptographically broken and deprecated for any security-sensitive use and modern practice is to use SHA-256 or stronger. MD5 still exists mainly for quick, non-adversarial integrity checks, but it shouldn’t be relied on for anything involving trust or verification against attackers.

By: BLewis

BLewis — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 16:11:54 +0000

A checksum does not make anything "more secure". It's only a digital fingerprint used to verify that the data has not been altered. Further, the MD5 checksum has been officially DEPRECATED for any security-sensitive use since at least 2011, and the industry has largely shifted to SHA-256 (part of the SHA-2 family) or SHA-3. NO ONE should be using MD5 checksums today. You should've started with this.

By: Sean Brannon

Sean Brannon — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 07:17:35 +0000

Consider using the vastly superior hashdeep suite (formerly known as md5deep). It can recurse through directories, or prevent recursion. You can check directory trees and display only the files that don't match a list in a given file, or conversely, only show those that do match. And much more.

By: Silversurfer

Silversurfer — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 05:36:49 +0000

Thank you!

For this useful article to geneerate and verify files with md5 checksum in linux.