What is MD-5 and SHA algorithm?

Password encryption using MD-5 and SHA algorithms

Question:- What is MD-5 algorithm?

Answer:- 

MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5)

MD5 was developed by Ronald Rivest in 1991 to replace an earlier hash function which was MD4. It was used to create digital signatures.

In cryptography, MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) are secure one-way hash functions means that it takes a message and converts it into a fixed string of digits. This algorithm will take arbitrary-sized (any sized) data and provides output a fixed-length hash value. It’s a widely used algorithm, which is used to produce unique and reliable identifiers of data. MD5 cryptograph algorithm has been employed in a wide variety of security applications. As per the investigators, it has been marked as MD5 is not collision resistant, so MD5 is not suitable for applications like SSL certificates or digital signatures that rely on this property. An MD5 hash is typically expressed as a 32 digit hexadecimal number.

Question:- What is SHA algorithm?

Answer:-

SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm)

The SHA hash functions are a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and published by the NIST as a U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard.  The three SHA algorithms are structured differently and are distinguished as SHA-0, SHA-1, and SHA-2. The SHA-2 family uses an identical algorithm with a variable digest size which is distinguished as SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512. SHA is a cryptographic message digest algorithm similar to MD5. SHA-1 hash considered to be one of the most secure hashing functions, producing a 160-bit digest (40 hex numbers) from any data with a maximum size of 2⁶⁴ bits. While Java has built in classes to compute SHA 1 hash, it's quite uneasy to use them for a simple task -- calculate SHA-1 hash and return 40 byte hexadecimal string.
SHA-1 is the best established of the existing SHA hash functions, and is employed in several widely used security applications and protocols.

Java Sample Example to use MD-5 and SHA algorithms:-

PasswordEncryptUsingMD5_SHA.java

package com.gaurav.java.security;

import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;

import java.security.MessageDigest;

import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;

import sun.misc.BASE64Encoder;

public class PasswordEncryptUsingMD5_SHA {

      /**

       * This method is used for Password Encryption using any passed algorithm

       * like SHA-1 and MD-5. we can also pass encoding style for password

       * encryption like UTF-8 or UTF-16

       */

      public static synchronized String encryptUsingOtherAlgorithm(

                  String plaintext, String algorithmUsed, String encodingStyle)

                  throws Exception {

            MessageDigest messageDigest = null;

            String encryptedStringValue = null;

            try {

                  messageDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance(algorithmUsed);

                  messageDigest.update(plaintext.getBytes(encodingStyle));

                  byte updatedByteArray[] = messageDigest.digest();

                  encryptedStringValue = (new BASE64Encoder())

                              .encode(updatedByteArray);

            } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {

                  System.out

                              .println("No such algorithm is supported by any provider :-"

                                          + e.getMessage());

            } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {

                  System.out.println("The encoding is not supported:-"

                              + e.getMessage());

            }

            return encryptedStringValue;

      }

}

PasswordEncryptUsingMD5_SHACaller.java

package com.gaurav.java.security;

public class PasswordEncryptUsingMD5_SHACaller {

      public static void main(String[] args) {

            try {

                  String passwordToEncrypt = "KumarGaurav";

                  System.out.println("Encrypted Password Using SHA Algorithm and UTF-8 encoding style :-> "

                                          + PasswordEncryptUsingMD5_SHA.encryptUsingOtherAlgorithm(passwordToEncrypt,"SHA", "UTF-8"));

                  System.out.println("Encrypted Password Using SHA-1 Algorithm and UTF-16 encoding style :-> "

                                          + PasswordEncryptUsingMD5_SHA.encryptUsingOtherAlgorithm(passwordToEncrypt,"SHA-1", "UTF-16"));

                  System.out.println("Encrypted Password Using MD-5 Algorithm and UTF-8 encoding style :-> "

                                          + PasswordEncryptUsingMD5_SHA.encryptUsingOtherAlgorithm(passwordToEncrypt,"MD5", "UTF-8"));

                  System.out.println("Encrypted Password Using MD-5 Algorithm and UTF-16 encoding style :-> "

                                          + PasswordEncryptUsingMD5_SHA.encryptUsingOtherAlgorithm(passwordToEncrypt,"MD5", "UTF-16"));

            } catch (Exception e) {

                  System.out

                              .println("Error while password encryption and decryption is :-> "

                                          + e.getMessage());

            }

      }

}

Result:-

Encrypted Password Using SHA Algorithm and UTF-8 encoding style :-> JEI4rXZtc37LO1sQDsSulbZ/pvw=

Encrypted Password Using SHA-1 Algorithm and UTF-16 encoding style :-> kXOnz+lWUoYzlOLXwHt/3J+qdCQ=

Encrypted Password Using MD-5 Algorithm and UTF-8 encoding style :-> 3i8hCnt+SgJ/mILHKJciqg==

Encrypted Password Using MD-5 Algorithm and UTF-16 encoding style :-> PjNcbOwPBWBTaXoiN8gTFQ==