What encryption did they use?

[Shadow Ozera]

Hello, for knowledges sake, i would like to learn how to tell what encryption has been used on a word, password, etc..

My question is, how can you tell what encryption someone has used to encrypt their "word"?

[Bren2010]

I don't believe there is a definite way, but there is a way to narrow it down depending on how it looks. Some are numbers, unicode characters, ascii characters, etc. However, there is also hashes which aren't anything like encryption.

If you could supply us with this "word", we might be able to tell you.

[sanddbox]

However, there is also hashes which aren't anything like encryption.

Ignoring the grammar error, lolwut? Hashes are nothing like encryption?

[Bren2010]

Hashes are nothing like encryption?

Yeah. Encryption is meant to be reversible. Hashes aren't. << Encrypted messages have a relationship to the original message; the only way to get the original message of a hash is to crack it.

[sanddbox]

Hashes are nothing like encryption?

Yeah. Encryption is meant to be reversible. Hashes aren't. << Encrypted messages have a relationship to the original message; the only way to get the original message of a hash is to crack it.

They're not encryption but they are extremely similar.

[Bren2010]

They're not encryption but they are extremely similar.

Extremely similar? More of what I said above: encryption is used to obscure a message, but make sure the correct party can get it back; hashes are used to permanently obscure a password/key so that (hopefully) no one can get it back.

I'll be fine with similar, but not extremely similar.

[randyjones717]

Yes hashes are tough, I had a salted MD5 I did for a challenge and could never figure it out, a whole week of trying to crack with rainbow tables.

[sanddbox]

Yes hashes are tough, I had a salted MD5 I did for a challenge and could never figure it out, a whole week of trying to crack with rainbow tables.

You tried to crack a *salted* hash with rainbow tables?

[randyjones717]

Yes hashes are tough, I had a salted MD5 I did for a challenge and could never figure it out, a whole week of trying to crack with rainbow tables.

You tried to crack a *salted* hash with rainbow tables?

I believe I am corrected a salted MD5 = a hash correct? This was a legal military hacking challenge.

[sanddbox]

Yes hashes are tough, I had a salted MD5 I did for a challenge and could never figure it out, a whole week of trying to crack with rainbow tables.

You tried to crack a *salted* hash with rainbow tables?

I believe I am corrected a salted MD5 = a hash correct? This was a legal military hacking challenge.

Before reading my post, please scroll down and view the pastebin provided at the bottom of my post instead. The formatting is better.

Both salted and unsalted MD5 hashes are hashes. The difference is that salted hashes require two "passwords" (in reality, it's hashing two inputs), as opposed to an unsalted hash which only hashes one input.

Because of the way salted hashes are made, rainbow tables are obsolete. Rainbow tables are just huge tables of precalculated hashes - however, a salt will make these precalculated values useless.

Let's look at the numbers 1-10. The hashes would be like this:

Input Output
1 Hash of 1
2 Hash of 2
3 Hash of 3
4 Hash of 4
5 Hash of 5
6 Hash of 6
7 Hash of 7
8 Hash of 8
9 Hash of 9
10 Hash of 10

This is a ridiculously small amount of hashes. However, let's look at it with a salted hash:

Input1 Input2 Output
1 1 Hash 1-1
1 2 Hash 1-2
1 3 Hash 1-3
1 4 Hash 1-4
1 5 Hash 1-5
1 6 Hash 1-6
1 7 Hash 1-7
1 8 Hash 1-8
1 9 Hash 1-9
1 10 Hash 1-10
2... 1... Hash 2-1...

For time's sake, I haven't listed all the salted combinations, but you can say that instead of x possibilities, there are now x^2 possibilities.

EDIT: My careful formatting has been ruined by the forum software Here's a pastebin.