{"id":373,"date":"2021-05-04T05:30:34","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T03:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/?p=373"},"modified":"2023-11-22T13:02:20","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T12:02:20","slug":"get-md5-hash-in-powershell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/get-md5-hash-in-powershell\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get an MD5 Hash in PowerShell?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>MD5 is a hashing algorithm, still popular despite the security issues. You can use it to encrypt a string or to get the fingerprint of a file. In this article, we&#8217;ll see how to use it in PowerShell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PowerShell offers a cmdlet to generate MD5 hash for a file: Get-FileHash. It can also be used to get the MD5 hash for a string, by opening a stream and hashing it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ll start by showing you how to use this cmdlet for a file, which is its main purpose. And then we&#8217;ll see how you can use it to hash strings too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_65 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title \" >Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 eztoc-toggle-hide-by-default' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/get-md5-hash-in-powershell\/#How_to_use_Get-FileHash_in_PowerShell\" title=\"How to use Get-FileHash in PowerShell?\">How to use Get-FileHash in PowerShell?<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-3' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/get-md5-hash-in-powershell\/#The_Get-FileHash_syntax\" title=\"The Get-FileHash syntax\">The Get-FileHash syntax<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/get-md5-hash-in-powershell\/#Get-FileHash_example\" title=\"Get-FileHash example\">Get-FileHash example<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/get-md5-hash-in-powershell\/#How_to_hash_a_string_in_PowerShell\" title=\"How to hash a string in PowerShell?\">How to hash a string in PowerShell?<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"How_to_use_Get-FileHash_in_PowerShell\"><\/span>How to use Get-FileHash in PowerShell?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if MD5 is no longer safe to use for encryption, it&#8217;s still an excellent solution to quickly check if a file transfer has been successful or not. <a href=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/generate-md5-file-checksum\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"128\">I explain everything in this article<\/a>, but in short the idea is to get the MD5 fingerprint of the file before and after the transfer. If it&#8217;s the same value, the file transfer is OK, if not the file is corrupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_Get-FileHash_syntax\"><\/span>The Get-FileHash syntax<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Get-FileHash cmdlet display the hash value of a file. By default, it uses the SHA256 algorithm, but we can add an extra parameter to use MD5. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is the cmdlet syntax:<br><code>Get-FileHash [-Path] &lt;file> [[-Algorithm] &lt;algo>] [Options]<\/code><br>So, the file path is mandatory, and then we can specify the hashing algorithm and a few other options we don&#8217;t need in our case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It can also be used with a stream instead of a file path. I give you the syntax directly, and we&#8217;ll see later how to use this to hash a string in PowerShell.<br>Here is the syntax for a stream input:<br><code>Get-FileHash [-InputStream] &lt;stream> [[-Algorithm] &lt;algo>] [Options]<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Get-FileHash_example\"><\/span>Get-FileHash example<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Ok, we know the syntax, let&#8217;s see how to use it.<br>It&#8217;s not complicated, here is an example:<br><code>Get-FileHash C:\\Windows\\explorer.exe -Algorithm MD5<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ll get something like this as a result:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"859\" height=\"117\" src=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/getfilehash-example.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/getfilehash-example.jpg 859w, https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/getfilehash-example-300x41.jpg 300w, https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/getfilehash-example-768x105.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 859px) 100vw, 859px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The -Path is not mandatory, so we don&#8217;t use it, we just give the file path and add the algorithm parameter to use MD5 instead of SHA256.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are using PowerShell in a script, you can create a variable with the result ($hash for example) and get the hash value with $hash.Hash to make sure it&#8217;s the same value as the original file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"How_to_hash_a_string_in_PowerShell\"><\/span>How to hash a string in PowerShell?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Unfortunately, there is no direct function to generate a hash from a string in PowerShell. However, it&#8217;s possible to use Get-FileHash with a stream parameter, so it&#8217;s a solution to compute the hash of a string.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s start directly with the script code, and I&#8217;ll explain after that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">$stringAsStream = [System.IO.MemoryStream]::new()\n$writer = [System.IO.StreamWriter]::new($stringAsStream)\n$writer.write(\"MD5Online\")\n$writer.Flush()\n$stringAsStream.Position = 0\nGet-FileHash -InputStream $stringAsStream -Algorithm MD5<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"455\" height=\"57\" src=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/md5-string-powershell.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-376\" srcset=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/md5-string-powershell.jpg 455w, https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/md5-string-powershell-300x38.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 455px) 100vw, 455px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>So, we start by creating a new stream ($stringAsStream)<\/li><li>Then we write on the stream ($writer)<\/li><li>And finally we hash the stream content with Get-FileHash.<br>The only change compared to the first part of this tutorial, is that we use -InputStream instead of -Path<\/li><li>As you can see on the picture, we get the MD5 hash of our string as a result.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not the easiest language to generate MD5 hashes from a string (<a href=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/set-md5-password-phpmyadmin\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"148\">PHP<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/decrypt-md5-python\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"172\">Python<\/a> have native functions for example), but it works \ud83d\ude42<br>If you need to use this often in your script, I would recommend creating a function that you can use each time it&#8217;s needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MD5 is a hashing algorithm, still popular despite the security issues. You can use it to encrypt a string or to get the fingerprint of a file. In this article, we&#8217;ll see how to use it in PowerShell. PowerShell offers a cmdlet to generate MD5 hash for a file: Get-FileHash. It can also be used&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":14,"label":"Security"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/get-md5-hash-powershell-1024x683.jpg",1024,683,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Patrick Fromaget","author_link":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/about\/"},"comment_info":1,"category_info":[{"term_id":14,"name":"Security","slug":"security","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":14,"taxonomy":"category","description":"Check out our easy-to-follow tips and facts in Security Information. Learn how passwords work and more, all explained in a way that's easy to understand.","parent":0,"count":21,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":14,"category_count":21,"category_description":"Check out our easy-to-follow tips and facts in Security Information. Learn how passwords work and more, all explained in a way that's easy to understand.","cat_name":"Security","category_nicename":"security","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":378,"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infosecscout.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}