Hash Generator (MD5 / SHA)
Compute MD5 and SHA-1 / SHA-256 / SHA-384 / SHA-512 digests of text or a file instantly, with copy and uppercase toggle.
Type text or choose a file.
What is it
A hash turns any input — a sentence or a whole file — into one short, fixed-length fingerprint. Change one comma and the fingerprint changes completely. MD5 is short (32 hex chars) and still handy for quick checks; the SHA family is the stronger, modern choice. Hashing is one-way: from the digest you cannot rebuild the original text.
Notes & fun facts
A classic party trick: the MD5 of the empty string is always d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e. Generations of developers have typed that string into terminals when wondering why their hash looks odd — usually because the file had an extra newline.
Origin & history
MD5 was designed by Ron Rivest in 1991 (RFC 1321, 1992) as the successor to MD4; collisions were found by 2004, so it is now only used for checksums. The Secure Hash Algorithm family was developed by the NSA: SHA-1 in 1995 (FIPS 180-1) and the stronger SHA-2 family (SHA-256/384/512) published in 2001 (FIPS 180-2).