Password Hash Generator

Hashing is a one-way function — you can convert a string into a hash, but you cannot reverse a hash back to the original string. Encryption is two-way: data is encrypted with a key and can be decrypted with the same or corresponding key. Passwords should always be hashed, never encrypted, because there is no legitimate reason to retrieve the original password. If a database is breached, hashed passwords require significantly more effort to crack than encrypted ones.

MD5 and SHA-1 are fast to compute, which makes them poor choices for password storage — an attacker with a GPU can try billions of hashes per second. They are still useful for checksums and non-security purposes like cache keys or file integrity checks. SHA-256 and SHA-512 are stronger but still fast. For actual password storage in production, use bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2 — these algorithms are intentionally slow and include a salt, making brute-force attacks impractical. This tool is useful for generating hashes for config files, API comparisons, and quick verification.