HAVAL Hash Generator
Compute a HAVAL hash in any of its 15 output-size and pass-count variants.
How to use the HAVAL Hash Generator
- Type or paste your text in the box.
- Pick the variant — the output size in bits and the number of passes.
- The hash appears as you type; click Copy to grab it.
About the HAVAL Hash Generator
HAVAL is a cryptographic hash function, designed by Yuliang Zheng, Josef Pieprzyk and Jennifer Seberry in 1992. Unlike the checksums and hash-table hashes it sits next to in this section, HAVAL was built with security in mind — it belongs in the same family of designs as MD5, and shares its general structure. What made it distinctive was flexibility: HAVAL is the rare hash that lets you choose both its output size and how much work it does.
That is where the 15 variants come from. The output can be 128, 160, 192, 224 or 256 bits — 32, 40, 48, 56 or 64 hexadecimal characters — and the compression function can be run in 3, 4 or 5 passes, with more passes meaning more mixing and, in principle, more security at the cost of speed. Five sizes times three pass counts gives the fifteen options in the dropdown. Crucially, the parameters are baked into the result: HAVAL-256 with 3 passes and HAVAL-256 with 5 passes produce entirely different hashes for the same input, even though both are 64 characters long. If you are comparing against a hash from somewhere else, you need to know both numbers, not just the length.
HAVAL is not recommended for new work. Cryptanalysis has caught up with it: practical collisions for the 128-bit, 3-pass variant were published in 2004 in the same wave of research that broke MD5 and MD4, and further weaknesses have been found in the reduced-pass variants since. Increasing the passes helps but does not restore confidence, and HAVAL never had the scrutiny or the deployment that would justify betting on it. Use it to work with existing data that already contains HAVAL hashes, or out of interest — but for anything new, use SHA-256, and use a purpose-built password hash such as bcrypt for passwords.
Frequently asked questions
What do the passes mean?
The number of times HAVAL runs its mixing rounds over each block of data — 3, 4 or 5. More passes means more thorough mixing and slower hashing. The pass count is part of the algorithm, so changing it changes the hash completely.
Why are there 15 variants?
HAVAL lets you pick an output size (128, 160, 192, 224 or 256 bits) and a pass count (3, 4 or 5) independently. Five sizes times three pass counts gives fifteen combinations, each producing a different hash.
Is HAVAL secure?
Not by modern standards. Practical collisions against HAVAL-128 with 3 passes were published in 2004 alongside the attacks on MD5 and MD4, and further weaknesses in reduced-pass variants followed. It is not recommended for new designs — use SHA-256 instead.
Do two variants with the same length give the same hash?
No. HAVAL-256 with 3 passes and HAVAL-256 with 5 passes are both 64 hex characters but are completely different values. You must match both the size and the pass count to reproduce someone else’s hash.
Is my text sent anywhere?
Your text is sent to our server to be hashed, because browsers cannot compute HAVAL. It is hashed and immediately discarded — never logged, never stored.