Hash Generator

It takes any input — a word, a file, a whole document — and produces a fixed-length string of characters called a hash (or digest). The same input always produces the same hash, a tiny change in the input produces a completely different hash, and there's no way to run the process backwards to recover the original input.

SHA-1 is cryptographically broken for collision resistance — researchers have demonstrated that two different inputs can be crafted to produce the same SHA-1 hash. That makes it unsafe for security purposes like certificates or digital signatures. It's still included here and used elsewhere for non-security checksums, like quick file comparisons, where collision resistance doesn't matter.

Both are currently considered secure with no known practical collision attacks. SHA-256 produces a 256-bit hash and is the most widely used default across TLS certificates, Git commits and blockchain systems. SHA-512 produces a 512-bit hash and can actually run faster than SHA-256 on 64-bit processors, but SHA-256 remains the more common choice for compatibility.

No. Encryption is reversible — with the right key, you decrypt ciphertext back into the original data. Hashing is one-way by design: there's no key that turns a hash back into its input. If you need to store and later retrieve original data securely, use encryption; if you need to verify that data hasn't changed, use hashing.

Common uses include verifying that a downloaded file matches the hash published by its source (confirming it wasn't corrupted or tampered with), checking file or data integrity in general, and storing password verification data. Note that real-world password storage should never hash a password alone — it should add a random salt per user and use a purpose-built algorithm like bcrypt or Argon2, not a general-purpose hash like SHA-256 run once.