SHA-2
SHA-2 is a standardized family of cryptographic hash algorithms that produces fixed-length digests, including SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512.
Software Security for Developers
SHA-2 is a family of standardized cryptographic hash functions that includes SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512.
- How it is used
- Detects accidental data corruption by comparing a recomputed SHA-256 digest with an expected value.
- How deep it goes
- Explains family variants, deterministic digests, Java access, validation steps, and why plain hashes stop short of active-tampering protection.
- Examples
- Uses refunds.json verification, detached .sha256 files, Java MessageDigest, Maven Central artifacts, and comparisons with MD5 and SHA-1.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose accidental file corruption with SHA-256 and select HMAC when integrity must include authenticity.
Real-World Cryptography
SHA-2 is a standardized family of cryptographic hash algorithms producing digests of 224, 256, 384, or 512 bits.
- How it is used
- Positions SHA-2 as a practical family of standardized cryptographic hashes for choosing digest algorithms.
- How deep it goes
- Defines variants and sketches compression and Merkle–Damgård processing, stopping short of implementation-level detail.
- Examples
- Demonstrates SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 outputs for “hello world” using OpenSSL.
- What you can do after
- Operate SHA-2 variants through the OpenSSL command-line interface and distinguish their digest lengths.
Related concepts
- SHA-256includes · SHA-256 is a standardized cryptographic hash function in the SHA-2 family that maps arbitrary input data to a fixed-length 256-bit digest.
- hash functionkind of · A hash function deterministically maps input data to a value in a bounded output range, commonly for indexing, lookup, comparison, or integrity checking.
- Davies–Meyer methoduses · The Davies–Meyer method is a compression-function construction that combines a block-cipher operation with a chaining value.
- Merkle–Damgård constructionkind of · The Merkle–Damgård construction builds an arbitrary-length hash function by iteratively applying a fixed-size compression function to padded message blocks.
- cryptographic hashkind of · A cryptographic hash is a fixed-length digest computed from input data by a deterministic function designed to resist preimage, second-preimage, and collision attacks.
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