How large can a hash value be?

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I ran into a discussion with one of the programmers at my office. Is there any limitations for how much data you can hash? There's a lot of different algorithms for hashing, but we use SHA-1 and SHA-2
Can I hash (in theory) a value of 100 gigabyte? or 1 petabyte?

Posted 23-Aug-12 22:06pm

StianSandberg

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StianSandberg · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-23T22:20:00

Solution 1

A little more googling and I found the answer.

The maximum input size = (2^length − 1) bits. For example, the maximum input size of SHA-1 = (2⁶⁴ − 1).
SHA-384 and SHA-512 has a maximum input size of (2¹²⁸ - 1)

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_cryptographic_hash_functions[^]

Posted 23-Aug-12 22:20pm

StianSandberg

Updated 23-Aug-12 22:21pm

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