If the result of a process is always the same length irrespective of the amount of data provided, you may be facing a hashing function. To determine which function, you can use the length of the resulting value:
Function | Length | Example, hash ("Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux") |
MD5 | 16 bytes | fbdcd5041c96ddbd82224270b57f11fc |
SHA-1 | 20 bytes | e8dd62289bcff206905cf269c06692ef7c6938a0 |
SHA-2 (256) | 32 bytes | dbb5195ef411019954650b6805bf66efc5fa5fef4f80a5f4afda702154ee07d3 |
SHA-2 (512) | 64 bytes |
6f0b5c34cbd9d66132b7d3a4484f1a9af02965904de38e3e3c4e66676d9 48f20bd0b5b3ebcac9fdbd2f89b76cfde5b0a0ad9c06bccbc662be420b877c080e8fe |
Notice how the preceding examples represent each byte in a hexadecimal codification using two hexadecimal digits to represent the value of each byte (0-255). For clarification, the 16 bytes in the MD5 hash are fb-dc-d5-04-1c-96-dd-bd-82-22-42-70-b5-7f-11-fc. The eleventh byte (42), for example, is the decimal value 66, which is the ASCII letter B.
Also, it is not uncommon to find hashes in base64 encoding. For example, the SHA-512 hash in the preceding table could also be presented as follows:
bwtcNMvZ1mEyt9OkSE8amvApZZBN444+PE5mZ22UjyC9C1s+vKyf29L4m3bP3lsKCtnAa8y8ZivkILh3wIDo/g==