How to identify and crack an SHA-512 hash

SHA-512 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-512 entirely in your browser — your hash is never uploaded. A typical example looks like this:

b109f3bbbc244eb82441917ed06d618b9008dd09b3befd1b5e07394c706a8bb980b1d7785e5976ec049b46df5f1326af5a2ea6d103fd07c95385ffab0cacbc86

Cracking SHA-512 with hashcat

Save the hash to a file and run hashcat in mode -m 1700. Start with a wordlist such as rockyou.txt:

echo 'b109f3bbbc244eb82441917ed06d618b9008dd09b3befd1b5e07394c706a8bb980b1d7785e5976ec049b46df5f1326af5a2ea6d103fd07c95385ffab0cacbc86' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 1700 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt

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

echo 'b109f3bbbc244eb82441917ed06d618b9008dd09b3befd1b5e07394c706a8bb980b1d7785e5976ec049b46df5f1326af5a2ea6d103fd07c95385ffab0cacbc86' > hash.txt && hashcat -m 1700 hash.txt /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt -r /usr/share/hashcat/rules/best64.rule

Cracking SHA-512 with John the Ripper

John the Ripper can attack the same hash with the raw-sha512 format:

echo 'b109f3bbbc244eb82441917ed06d618b9008dd09b3befd1b5e07394c706a8bb980b1d7785e5976ec049b46df5f1326af5a2ea6d103fd07c95385ffab0cacbc86' > hash.txt && john --format=raw-sha512 --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt hash.txt