BLAKE2-384 Hash

What is BLAKE2-384?

BLAKE2-384 is a cryptographic hash function derived from the BLAKE (Blake, Augmented) family, specifically designed as part of the BLAKE2 series introduced in 2013 by Jean-Philippe Aumasson, Samuel Neves, and Zuccherato. Structurally, it follows a Merkle-Damgård construction with a variable-length input and a fixed 384-bit (48-byte) output, making it suitable for applications requiring higher collision resistance than SHA-256 while maintaining performance efficiency. The algorithm incorporates a keyed variant (BLAKE2b) and a non-keyed variant (BLAKE2), with BLAKE2-384 belonging to the latter, optimized for speed and security in modern hardware architectures. Its primary use-case lies in scenarios demanding robust integrity verification, such as password storage (via keyed hashing with salts), blockchain data integrity, and cryptographic nonces, where a 384-bit digest balances security margins and computational overhead.

Despite its design strengths, BLAKE2-384 exhibits vulnerabilities rooted in its computational efficiency and architectural choices. Without proper salting or peppering, it remains susceptible to rainbow table attacks, particularly when used for password hashing, as the absence of a secret key or unique per-user salt reduces resistance to precomputed lookups. Additionally, its parallelizable compression function—designed for GPU/CPU acceleration—enables brute-force attacks to leverage high-throughput hardware (e.g., FPGAs or ASICs) to crack hashes at accelerated speeds. While collision resistance is theoretically robust, practical attacks exploiting optimized implementations (e.g., side-channel leaks or hardware-specific optimizations) could theoretically reduce the effective security margin, though no practical collisions have been demonstrated in real-world deployments. Its reliance on 64-bit word operations also makes it vulnerable to timing attacks if not implemented with constant-time safeguards.

Identifying BLAKE2-384 Hashes

Identifying a hash blindly is often difficult because multiple algorithms can output strings of the exact same length. For example, a standard 32-character hexadecimal string could be MD5, NTLM, MD4, or LM. To definitively identify BLAKE2-384, security researchers analyze the hash against a strict regular expression (regex) signature (shown above) to find structural matches.

How to Crack BLAKE2-384

If you need to recover the plaintext password for a BLAKE2-384 hash during a penetration test or forensics investigation, you must supply the correct module ID to your cracking software. Use the exact commands provided at the top of this page to target the hash successfully.