Question

I am trying to generate a SHA256 hash in android, that I then pass to an ASP.NET Web API web service and compare the hash there. As such, I need to construct a hash in Android, that given the same inputs in ASP.NET will generate an equivalent hash. I’m pulling my hair out trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong.

Here’s the Android code:

public String computeHash(String input) throws NoSuchAlgorithmException{
    MessageDigest digest = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-256");
    digest.reset();
    try{
      digest.update(input.getBytes("UTF-8"));
    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e){
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
    
    byte[] byteData = digest.digest(input.getBytes());
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();

    for (int i = 0; i < byteData.length; i++){
      sb.append(Integer.toString((byteData[i] & 0xff) + 0x100, 16).substring(1));
    }
    return sb.toString();
}

Here’s the C# code for the server:

    private static string ComputeHash(string input, HashAlgorithm algorithm)
    {

        Byte[] inputBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(input);
        Byte[] hashedBytes = algorithm.ComputeHash(inputBytes);

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

        for (int i = 0; i < hashedBytes.Length; i++)
        {
            sb.Append(String.Format("{0:x2}", hashedBytes[i]));
        }

        return sb.ToString();
    }

Answer 1

Your Java code is wrong: you are adding the input bytes twice. If you are calculating this in one go, you need to either call only digest(bytes) or call digest() after update(bytes);