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MD5 Tool
Use this tools to hash a string into a message digested MD5 hash. This is a quick way for you to verify a hash you are creating is correct. If you are using salt, make sure to include that in the string.
What is an MD5 Hash?
MD5 is a 128 bit "message-digest" algorithm that was released in 1991. It creates a 16 byte hash value for the input of the algorithm. MD5 is one-way, meaning that the original input cannot be be determined simply by knowing the hash value. MD5 was also intended to be collision resistant, meaning that two inputs could not have the same hash value, until 2004 when it was determined not to be resistant.
When and why would you use MD5 Hash?
MD5 is often used as a checksum algorithm. Text or files are fed into the MD5 algorithm and the resulting hash would change if the file had been changed. This is done to detect malicious tampering, or file corruption.
MD5 has also historically been used as a password hashing algorithm. Password hashing algorithms allow a password to be stored, in a website's database for instance, without having to store the actual password. This makes it more difficult to steal passwords, and if the hash is taken, the user's password is not necessarily compromised. When using a hashing algorithm for passwords it is wise to use "salt". With MD5, salt is added by concatinating a string unrelated to the password to the user supplied password string. MD5 has since been deemed too weak for this, and was succeeded by SHA-1 and then SHA-2.Examples
A plain MD5 hash: I love Dan's Tools! results in a hash of acf014f1bc68c2af42e1e349221e403b.
supersecret would be salted so the input for the MD5 is saltstringsupersecret. This would result in a hash of 75f94b73c4b8564b6e07369b031764b6.
| Language | Encode | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PHP | md5($string); | |
| Perl | md5($string); | *requires use Digest::MD5 qw(md5 md5_hex md5_base64); |