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Asked: 2026-06-08T18:13:51+00:00

I’m hashing a password in SQL directly like this : DECLARE @HashThis nvarchar(4000); SET

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I’m hashing a password in SQL directly like this :

DECLARE @HashThis nvarchar(4000);
SET @HashThis = 'SecretPizza'

INSERT into Users (UserId,Password)
Values ('CryptTest',HASHBYTES('SHA1', @HashThis))

Result :

enter image description here

When I try and change the SHA1 Algorithm to SHA2_256 or SHA2_512 I get the following error :

enter image description here

Question 1 – Is this really supposed to give me chinese like characters ?
Question 2 – Those are valid algorithm so how come I can’t use them and why is encryption setting @HashThis to null?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Question 1: You get “Chinese like” characters because you are inserting a varbinary value returned by HASHBYTES into an nvarchar column, so SQL Server is trying to interpret the bytes as Unicode code points (characters).

    Question 2: Not supported before SQL Server 2012 – see SQL Server 2008 R2 HASHBYTES SHA2 returns null

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