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# Hash Avalanche Visualizer

Type two nearly-identical messages and watch a cryptographic hash's avalanche effect: a change of a single character flips about half of the digest's output bits.

The same five digests over a whole file, with a checksum list to verify them against, are the File Hasher & Checksum Verifier. To read one of them as a shape rather than as hex, Hash Landscape builds its terrain out of a SHA-256.

About this lab3 paragraphs

The two digests are shown side by side with the differing hex nibbles highlighted, each underlined by how many of its four bits flipped (so a one-bit change and a four-bit change read differently), and the share of bits that changed is reported.

The verdict grades diffusion against the ideal, which is half the output bits and no more. A function that flipped every bit would be exactly as predictable as one that flipped none, so the bar is closeness to half rather than height. All five functions offered here clear it, MD5 included.

That is not a recommendation, and the page says so: pick MD5 or SHA-1 and the digests arrive under the same `[ WARN ]` label the File Hasher shows, because avalanche is one property, collision resistance is another, and both fail the second badly while passing the first. Nor is a strong reading a proof about the function: it is one pair of inputs, sampled. The same digests are available offline through `hash-cli`.