About the SHA-512 Hash Generator
SHA-512 is the 512-bit member of the SHA-2 family, producing 128 hexadecimal characters. It offers a larger security margin than SHA-256 and, on 64-bit hardware, is often faster because it works on 64-bit words. It is used where a longer digest is wanted, in some certificate chains, and as the basis of the SHA-512/256 variant.
Like the rest of SHA-2 it is secure against known attacks but fast, so it is not for password storage; use bcrypt or Argon2 there. This tool computes it locally from your text's UTF-8 bytes.
One property that surprises people is length extension. Given a SHA-512 digest and the length of the message behind it, an attacker can compute the digest of that message with extra bytes appended, without ever learning the original content. That breaks the tempting habit of authenticating a request by hashing a secret followed by the body, because anyone can extend the body and produce a valid-looking digest. Use the HMAC Generator, which is constructed to resist exactly this, or the truncated SHA-384, which is not affected.
Hex or Base64 output is available. For file hashing use the File Hash Generator.
How to use
- Paste text.
- Choose the output format.
- Copy the SHA-512 hash.
Common questions
- Is SHA-512 more secure than SHA-256?
- It has a larger digest and margin, but SHA-256 is already secure for practical purposes. Choose based on what the receiving system expects.
- Is SHA-512 slower than SHA-256?
- On 64-bit systems it can be faster, since it uses 64-bit operations.
- Can I use it for passwords?
- Not on its own; it is fast. Use a slow, salted algorithm like bcrypt.