MD5 and SHA are hash functions, they create fingerprint - fixed-length representation - from the bunch of data. For example, they are extensively used as a way to check consistency of your iso image downloads for many open-source products, but this means you can use them to create fingerprints from any selection of bytes. So they do not encrypt.
If you want to encrypt, you should check for encryption algorithms. The most feasible now I believe is AES (Advanced encryption Standard) if you look for symmetric encryption algorithms (eg. where key for encryption and decryption is the same or easily computed one from another) or RSA if you look for asymmetric (where you have 2 keys - public and private, and compute private key from public is hard task).
If you are about to create digital signatures, you may want to check things like DSA (digital signature algorithm) and ECDSA (DSA over elliptic curves.). Note that asymmetric algorithms work over numbers with extended precision - like 512, 1024, 2048 bits and so on. You need special libraries that can handle such numbers. If you use C++ I can recommend you trying Crypto++. Find something similar for other languages.
I hope this was useful for you.
manpreet![Tuteehub forum best answer]()
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2 years ago
I'm some newbie of data encryption. I goggling data encryption and mostly found md5 and SHA algorithms.Which technology do you consider to be the best for data storage/security and why?