Quick Hashing with SHA256
Written by Dr. Jim Marquardson
Assistant Professor of Information Assurance and Cyber Defense
College of Business, Northern Michigan University
jimarqua@nmu.edu
updated February 26, 2021
Generate a SHA-256 Hash Online
Use the fields below to generate SHA-256 hashes for verifying message integrity.
Text input:
| SHA256 |
Generate a SHA-256 Hash with PowerShell
PowerShell is a command line interface that exists on every moden Windows computer. PowerShell has "cmdlets" that act as small programs that you can run. One cmdlet, the Get-FileHash, can generate the hash of a file.
- In the Windows search menu, launch Windows PowerShell.
- Change the folder to your desktop by running "cd ~/Desktop" (without the quotes). The "cd" stands for "change directory." The tilde "~" is a shortcut for your home folder.
- Create a text file on your desktop in Notepad. Do not use Word. Save the file in Notepad as message.txt on your desktop. Close Notepad.
- Run "Get-FileHash message.txt" (without quotes).
- PowerShell will show you the hash using the SHA256 algorithm by default, though other algorithms are available.
The following video (wihtout audio) shows the process of creating a file and calculating a hash with PowerShell.