About the Hash Generator
Cryptographic hashes turn arbitrary input into a fixed-size digest: the same input always yields the same output, and any change — a single bit — produces a completely different digest. This generator computes MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, and SHA-512 in your browser, for verifying downloads, comparing configs, generating cache keys, and deduplicating content.
Knowing which algorithm to use matters more than computing it: SHA-256 is the default for integrity and signatures; MD5 and SHA-1 are cryptographically broken for security purposes but persist legitimately for checksums, cache keys, and legacy protocol compatibility.
Frequently asked questions
Is MD5 still safe to use for anything?
For security, no — collisions can be generated at will, so MD5 must not be used for signatures, certificates, or password storage. For non-adversarial uses like cache keys, partition keys, or detecting accidental corruption, it remains acceptable and fast — though xxHash-class non-cryptographic hashes are faster if you control both ends.
Why should passwords never be stored as SHA-256 hashes?
General-purpose hashes are designed to be fast, and fast is fatal for passwords: a GPU computes billions of SHA-256 hashes per second, making short passwords trivially brute-forceable. Password storage needs deliberately slow, salted algorithms — bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2 — tuned so each guess costs real time.
What is the difference between a hash and a checksum?
Both detect changes, but cryptographic hashes guarantee it is computationally infeasible to craft two inputs with the same digest, while checksums (CRC32, Adler-32) only catch accidental corruption and are trivial to forge. Verifying a download against an attacker-modifiable page needs a cryptographic hash — ideally with a signature over it.
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