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SHA-512 Hash Generator

Compute 512-bit SHA-512 hashes for text or files in your browser. Higher-strength SHA-2 variant; common in password hashing schemes and some integrity contexts.

Input
Hashes
Paste text to compute MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512.

Inputs stay on this device. Every developer tool on TaskKit runs entirely in your browser. Tokens, payloads, and pasted text are not transmitted to TaskKit servers or third parties.

What this tool does

Computes the SHA-512 hash of any text or file in your browser, returning a 128-character hexadecimal digest. SHA-512 is part of the SHA-2 family (FIPS 180-4), designed by the NSA and published in 2001 alongside SHA-256. It produces a 512-bit output and operates on 64-bit words, which gives it a meaningful speed advantage over SHA-256 on 64-bit CPUs when hashing large amounts of data.

When SHA-512 is the right choice

  • High-security signatures. Some compliance regimes (NIST SP 800-131A higher-strength tier, certain government use cases) prefer or require ≥384-bit digests. SHA-512 satisfies that.
  • Large-file integrity. On 64-bit hardware SHA-512 is typically 1.3–1.6× faster than SHA-256 for multi-gigabyte inputs. The extra digest size doesn't hurt; the throughput helps.
  • Password hashing schemes that internally use SHA-512. crypt(3)'s $6$ format is SHA-512-based. Note: that scheme is not a substitute for bcrypt/Argon2 — it's slow only because of its iteration count, not its primitive.
  • HMAC-SHA-512 for message authentication where the larger output reduces birthday-bound concerns at the keying construction level.
  • Truncated hashes via SHA-512/256 or SHA-512/224. When you want SHA-256-sized output but the speed of SHA-512 on 64-bit hardware, the FIPS truncation variants give you exactly that.

When to prefer SHA-256 instead

  • Universality. Every system accepts SHA-256; many older or embedded systems don't accept SHA-512.
  • Output size matters. Database columns, URL fields, certificate fingerprints — SHA-256 is half the bytes.
  • 32-bit hardware. SHA-256 is faster on 32-bit CPUs and most microcontrollers; SHA-512's 64-bit word operations have to be emulated.

When SHA-512 is not the right tool

  • Password storage. Use bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2. SHA-512 alone is too fast — it doesn't matter that it's larger; the CPU/GPU still computes hundreds of millions per second.
  • Direct key derivation from a password. Use HKDF or PBKDF2-SHA-512, not bare SHA-512.
  • MAC of an arbitrary message. Use HMAC-SHA-512. Bare SHA-512 of key || message is vulnerable to length-extension attacks.

Test vectors

From the SHA-512 reference suite:

  • Empty string "" → cf83e1357eefb8bdf1542850d66d8007d620e4050b5715dc83f4a921d36ce9ce47d0d13c5d85f2b0ff8318d2877eec2f63b931bd47417a81a538327af927da3e
  • "abc" → ddaf35a193617abacc417349ae20413112e6fa4e89a97ea20a9eeee64b55d39a2192992a274fc1a836ba3c23a3feebbd454d4423643ce80e2a9ac94fa54ca49f
  • "abcdefghbcdefghicdefghijdefghijkefghijklfghijklmghijklmnhijklmnoijklmnopjklmnopqklmnopqrlmnopqrsmnopqrstnopqrstu" → 8e959b75dae313da8cf4f72814fc143f8f7779c6eb9f7fa17299aeadb6889018501d289e4900f7e4331b99dec4b5433ac7d329eeb6dd26545e96e55b874be909

Notes

Why 128 characters? SHA-512 produces 512 bits = 64 bytes = 128 hex characters. Twice the visual length of a SHA-256 digest.

Length-extension attack — what is it? Given SHA-512(secret || message) and the length of secret, an attacker can compute SHA-512(secret || message || padding || extension) without knowing secret. This is why naive MAC constructions are unsafe; HMAC was designed specifically to avoid it.

Why does my SHA-512 differ from sha512sum? Trailing newline. Same answer as for the other algorithms: echo -n or use the file picker.

  • Hash Generator — all five hashes side by side
  • SHA-256 — half the digest size, same security level, more universally supported
  • SHA-1 — deprecated, kept around for git and legacy checksums
  • Base64 — encode the binary digest for transport