How to identify and crack an SHA-256 hash

SHA-256 is an raw / unsalted hash type. It is fast and typically unsalted, which makes weak passwords recoverable quickly on consumer GPU hardware. This page shows how to recognise it and the exact commands to attack it.

All identification runs locally in WebAssembly. The commands below write the hash to a local file on your machine — nothing is sent to this site.

Identifying the hash

The hash identifier on the home page detects SHA-256 entirely in your browser — your hash is never uploaded. A typical example looks like this:

5e884898da28047151d0e56f8dc6292773603d0d6aabbdd62a11ef721d1542d8

Cracking SHA-256 with hashcat

Save the hash to a file and run hashcat in mode -m 1400. Start with a wordlist such as rockyou.txt:

echo '5e884898da28047151d0e56f8dc6292773603d0d6aabbdd62a11ef721d1542d8' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 1400 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt

Add a rule set to mutate dictionary words (capitalisation, leetspeak, appended digits) and dramatically widen coverage:

echo '5e884898da28047151d0e56f8dc6292773603d0d6aabbdd62a11ef721d1542d8' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 1400 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt -r /usr/share/hashcat/rules/best64.rule

Cracking SHA-256 with John the Ripper

John the Ripper can attack the same hash with the raw-sha256 format:

echo '5e884898da28047151d0e56f8dc6292773603d0d6aabbdd62a11ef721d1542d8' > hash.txt && john --format=raw-sha256 --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt hash.txt