This is a beginners guide for the Windows operating system and will make use of GUIs almost exclusively. It will walk you through the process of installing the required software, importing the signing key, downloading the necessary files, and finally verifying that your binary is authentic.
This section will cover downloading the Monero signing key, verifying that the key is correct, and then importing the key to your keyring. The hash file that will be used to verify your binary is cryptographically signed with the Monero signing key. In order to check the validity of this file you must have the public version of the signing key.
This section will cover installing the cryptography software. Windows does not come with the tools required to verify your binary. To install these tools you can use the Gpg4win installer.
To protect the integrity of the binaries the Monero team provides a cryptographically signed list of all the [SHA256](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2) hashes. If your downloaded binary has been tampered with it will be produce a [different hash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_verification) than the one in the file.
Verification of the Monero binary files should be done prior to extracting, installing, or using the Monero software. This is the only way to ensure that you are using the official Monero binary. If you receive a fake binary (eg. phishing, MITM, etc.), following this guide will protect you from being tricked into using it.
