RIPEMD-160 Generator
Generate the RIPEMD-160 hash of any text quickly. The tool encodes your input as UTF-8, runs the 160-bit RIPEMD-160 function designed in Leuven in 1996 and returns the digest as 40 hex characters or as Base64. Developers use it to check Bitcoin address steps, older OpenPGP signatures and legacy systems that still store RIPEMD-160 digests, and to compare against other libraries.
Frequently asked questions
What is RIPEMD-160?
RIPEMD-160 is a 160-bit cryptographic hash function published in 1996 by Hans Dobbertin, Antoon Bosselaers and Bart Preneel. It runs two parallel lines of computation and combines them. The digest is 20 bytes, or 40 hexadecimal characters.
What are the RIPEMD-160 test vectors?
The empty string hashes to 9c1185a5c5e9fc54612808977ee8f548b2258d31. The text abc hashes to 8eb208f7e05d987a9b044a8e98c6b087f15a0bfc. Both come from the designers' published test values.
How does Bitcoin use RIPEMD-160?
Bitcoin computes HASH160, which is RIPEMD-160 of the SHA-256 of a public key, to build addresses. This tool hashes the UTF-8 bytes of the text you enter, so it does not perform the SHA-256 step or accept raw key bytes in hex.
Is RIPEMD-160 still secure?
No practical collision or preimage attack on full RIPEMD-160 is known. Its 160-bit output only gives about 80 bits of collision resistance, which is below today's recommendations. Prefer SHA-256 or SHA3-256 for new designs.
Is RIPEMD-160 related to SHA-1?
Both have 160-bit outputs and descend from the MD4 design ideas, but their structures differ. Unlike SHA-1, RIPEMD-160 has no published practical collision.
How is my text processed?
The input is encoded as UTF-8 and hashed exactly as entered, including whitespace and line breaks. The computation runs in WebAssembly on the server and nothing is stored.
What is the Base64 option for?
Base64 shows the same 20 bytes in 28 characters, which suits JSON and configuration files. Hex is the usual form for logs and command-line tools such as openssl dgst -ripemd160.
Can I hash a hex string as raw bytes?
No. The tool always hashes the text you type, so the string 00ff is hashed as four ASCII characters, not as two bytes. Use a scripting library if you need to hash binary data.
Should I use RIPEMD-160 for passwords?
No. It is a fast hash, which lets attackers check guesses rapidly. Use bcrypt, scrypt or Argon2 for passwords.
What is the maximum input size?
Each request accepts up to 5 MiB of text. For larger data, hash it locally with a command-line tool.