Is it possible to get the SHA256 of an APK solely through ADB? I am currently working on a project which will identify malware that are residing on a device.

My aim is to make a hash-based detection of Android malware on a device by only accessing the ADB port of the device and getting the SHA-256 (MD5, SHA1, etc could also work) of the base.apk which resides in the app's data directory.

Is there any way to get the hash of an .apk file that is installed on a device using ADB, but without installing another app?
On most devices the command-line application sha256sum is present which can be used to generate the SHA-256 digest of one or more files. 

It can be used via adb so that you can use it to generate a digest of each APK file without having to transfer it to the PC.