sha224(sha224($pass).$salt) Hash

What is sha224(sha224($pass).$salt)?

The cryptographic hash format `sha224(sha224($pass).$salt)` is a nested hashing scheme derived from the SHA-2 family of cryptographic hash functions, specifically SHA-224, a truncated variant of SHA-256 with a 224-bit (28-byte) output. Its structure involves two sequential SHA-224 operations: first, the plaintext password (`$pass`) is hashed, then concatenated with a unique salt (`$salt`), and the resulting string is hashed again. This format emerged as an ad-hoc hardening mechanism against brute-force attacks, particularly in legacy systems where computational resources were constrained, and it was intended to mitigate rainbow table precomputation by introducing per-user salt variability. While not standardized, it was occasionally employed in password storage schemes—particularly in early web applications or embedded systems—to balance security and performance, though its design lacks formal cryptographic rigor. The primary use-case was to obfuscate plaintext passwords with a lightweight, deterministic transformation, though its cryptographic soundness was never its defining strength.

The vulnerability of `sha224(sha224($pass).$salt)` stems from its inherent structural weaknesses and computational inefficiencies. The nested SHA-224 operations, though doubling the effective hash length, do not significantly raise the security margin due to SHA-224’s inherent 112-bit effective security (collision resistance), leaving it susceptible to preimage and second-preimage attacks with feasible computational effort. The salt, while mitigating rainbow table attacks, is poorly integrated—its inclusion via simple concatenation before the second hash does not prevent GPU/FPGA-accelerated cracking via optimized SHA-224 implementations (e.g., CUDA- or OpenCL-optimized hashcat modules). Additionally, the truncated output (224 bits) reduces the key space, enabling dictionary attacks and brute-force attempts to exhaust the space with modest parallelization. The lack of key stretching (e.g., iterative hashing or work factors) makes it vulnerable to hardware-accelerated cracking, rendering it obsolete against modern attack vectors.

Identifying sha224(sha224($pass).$salt) 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 sha224(sha224($pass).$salt), security researchers analyze the hash against a strict regular expression (regex) signature (shown above) to find structural matches.

How to Crack sha224(sha224($pass).$salt)

If you need to recover the plaintext password for a sha224(sha224($pass).$salt) 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.