I'm not too familiar with encryption and I was hoping someone could tell me? Thanks for any help.
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Where did you get this from? Without any contect we just can guess. – Daniel Ruf Dec 07 '15 at 19:28
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That looks like hexadecimal, but may or may not actually be an encrypted message. Since it represents 20 bytes, it could be the result of an SHA-1 calculation. Is there any context for this string? – amccormack Dec 07 '15 at 19:28
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That looks like [Hexadecimal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal). Beyond that, nobody is going to be able to tell you much. – Mike Ounsworth Dec 07 '15 at 19:28
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No context, it was posted as a "challenge" on a site. – Shad Dec 07 '15 at 19:29
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hexadecimal or a SHA-1 hash – Daniel Ruf Dec 07 '15 at 19:29
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4lol, so you want us to do the challenge for you? – Mike Ounsworth Dec 07 '15 at 19:29
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SHA-1 is breakable, check rainbow tables or brute force it. – Alex Dec 07 '15 at 20:38
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This is a sequence of 40 hexadecimal characters. As such, they represent the value of a sequence of exactly 20 bytes.
Then these bytes could be just about anything, but "20 bytes" suggests the use of the hash function SHA-1 or a derivative thereof. SHA-1 is hashing, not encryption (although there are some misguided souls who keep on ranting about "password encryption" in that case -- some people are just beyond redemption).
Of course there are many other ways in which 20 bytes could end up somewhere. Even among hash functions, SHA-1 is not the only one which has an output of 20 bytes; it just is the most common.
Tom Leek
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