Hash Identifier
Welcome to Omni’s hash identifier, the ultimate hash recognition tool! If you are new to the area of hash types, we will quickly teach you the basics:
- What hashes are and why we need them;
- What role hashing plays in assuring password security and data integrity; and
- How to identify hash types manually or using Omni’s hash recognition tool.
What is a hash?
A hash is the output of a hash function. It is a string of numbers and letters (more precisely, a hexadecimal number, so the letters are in fact restricted to a to f).
🙋 A hash is also called a message digest or just a digest.
You can imagine hashes as digital fingerprints: we use them, for example, to verify if two pieces of data are identical (i.e., whether a copy of a document matches the original or if a piece of software you have just downloaded was not infected by malware).
One specific application is password security: to verify that a user inputs the correct password, we compare the hash of their input with the hash of their password stored in the database.
🔎 To learn how to increase the security of your passwords, check out Omni’s password entropy calculator.
What are hash functions?
A hash function is a map that takes a string of characters and outputs another string, called a hash.
Here are a couple of important properties of cryptographic hash functions:
- They are deterministic, i.e., the same input always produces the same output.
- However, a tiny change in the input leads to a drastically different hash, which is sometimes called the avalanche effect. For instance:
Input | MD5 Hash (hex) |
|---|---|
message | 78e731027d8fd50ed642340b7c9a63b3 |
massage | 45c48cce2e2d7fbdea1afc51c7c6ad26 |
- They accept input of any input length. A vast majority of hash functions then produce fixed-size hashes (but some can produce hashes of various lengths).
- It is virtually impossible to invert this map (given current technology), i.e., to guess the original string based on its hash.
- There should be very few pairs of two different inputs that generate the same hash (very few collisions).
💡 To learn more, go to a dedicated article explaining how hash functions work. Then go see a few examples of hash functions.
Hash tables
Omni’s hash identifier deals with hashing in the context of encryption. Yet, hash functions are also a key ingredient in a data structure called hash tables, which aim to provide high-speed access to the stored data. You can learn more by reading an article explaining what a hash table is.
How do I identify a hash function?
The only feasible hash recognition method is based on the length of the digest to narrow down the canidates:
- Count how many bytes your hash consists of.
- Compare the result with a table that summarizes the digest length of popular hash types.
Name | Bits | Bytes |
|---|---|---|
MD5 | 128 | 16 |
NTLM | 128 | 16 |
SHA-1 | 160 | 20 |
RIPEMD-160 | 160 | 20 |
SHA-256 | 256 | 32 |
SHA3-256 | 256 | 32 |
RIPEMD-256 | 256 | 32 |
SHA-384 | 384 | 48 |
SHA-512 | 512 | 64 |
SHA3-512 | 512 | 64 |
A much faster way is to use Omni's hash algorithm identifier!
How to use Omni's hash calculator
Omni’s hash algorithm identifier is familiar with 45 hash functions, ranging from CRC32 with a hash length of 32 bits (8 bytes), via the most popular MD, SHA, RIPEMD, and Tiger families, all the way up to FNV-1 1024 with a hash length of 1024 bits (256 bytes).
If you need fast hash recognition:
- Open Omni’s hash algorithm identifier.
- Paste in the hash (digest) under consideration.
- Our hash calculator will immediately identify hash functions that could have produced your hash.
Is hashing the same as encryption?
No, they are very different concepts:
- In encryption, it must be possible to recover the original message, so the procedure must be reversible. In consequence, long messages will produce equally long ciphers, as happens, e.g., in the Caesar cipher.
- Hashing, on the other hand, produces digests of constant length, no matter if you have hashed your name or 24 books of the Iliad. The hash is like a digital fingerprint, allowing us to, e.g., detect modifications, but not to recover the entirety of the hashed string.
To learn more, go to Omni’s page dedicated to cryptographic hash functions.
FAQs
What are most popular hash types?
The two most popular historic hash types are MD5 and SHA-1, but they have weak security. Others with better security include:
- SHA-256, SHA3-256, and RIPEMD-256 are strong modern hash types.
- SHA-512 and SHA3-512 are very strong modern hash types for high-security needs.
What are pseudorandom numbers?
Pseudorandom numbers appear random but are generated by a deterministic algorithm: one can recover the whole “random” sequence once you know the seed used by the algorithm to produce them. We use pseudorandom numbers in simulations, Monte Carlo methods, cryptography, etc.
Many philosophers of science postulate that the classical sources of randomness in nature (like rolling a die or tossing a coin) are in fact deterministic, hence pseudorandom. The only true source of randomness in this approach is quantum mechanics.
Which hash types are recommended for cryptography?
The modern hash types that the experts consider safe are SHA-256 and SHA-512 (from the SHA-2 family) and SHA-3. Additionally, it is highly recommended to use salting to increase password storage security. You should also use a dedicated password hashing function (such as PBKDF2, bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2) that utilizes the above hash functions along with iteration and memory-hardening mechanisms.
What is salt in passwords?
A salt is a random value added to a password before hashing to make each password hash unique. Even if two users have the same password, different salts will produce entirely different hashes due to the avalanche property of cryptographic hash functions. This helps prevent attacks based on precomputed hash tables, such as rainbow tables.