Quickly generate an MD5 hash for a text string using OpenSSL

echo -n 'text to be encrypted' | openssl md5

Thanks to OpenSSL, you can quickly and easily generate MD5 hashes for your passwords. Alternative (thanks to linuxrawkstar and atoponce): echo -n 'text to be encrypted' | md5sum - Note that the above method does not utlise OpenSSL.

Sample Output

8df639b301a1e10c36cc2f03bbdf8863

By: Zenexer

2009-03-18 00:11:46

echo Security Encryption

2 Alternatives + Submit Alt

Quickly generate an MD5 hash for a text string using OpenSSL

Here Strings / A variant of here documents, the format is: (from bash manpage)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

md5sum<<<'text to be encrypted'

waldvogel · 2012-02-14 19:57:52 2
Quickly generate an MD5 hash for a text string using OpenSSL
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

echo -n 'the_password' | md5sum -

jfreak53 · 2012-06-04 13:18:33 2

What Others Think

echo -n 'text to be encrypted' | md5sum 8df639b301a1e10c36cc2f03bbdf8863 - md5sum is all you need for md5 hashes

linuxrawkstar · 742 weeks and 3 days ago

@linuxrawkstar you should include the '-' at the end for POSIX compliance, even though it works without it. echo -n 'text to be encrypted' | md5sum -

atoponce · 742 weeks and 3 days ago

True, though I prefer to use OpenSSL, as I know it will/can be present on just about all systems. Even on Windows, I always install OpenSSL. I love consistency. Granted, I could just rename some random Windows utility to md5sum.exe, but that's not fun. I'll add it as an alternative, though.

Zenexer · 742 weeks and 2 days ago

On my Ubuntu system, md5sum adds a carriage return at the end of the string, the same as using echo without -n : echo 'text to be encrypted' | openssl md5 So, the original solution with openssl would appear to be the only reliable one.

cbrace · 577 weeks and 3 days ago

seofox · 81 weeks ago

rahimhh21 · 39 weeks and 3 days ago

Perfecthomepugs · 31 weeks and 3 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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