Assignment 1

Write a program that takes some data as string input. Then it tries to find a positive number x such that when x is appended to the end of the string, the SHA256 hash of this new string is less than the target, which is

0x00000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Also print the time it takes to get this nonce value.

Instructions to Run

1. Clone the repository
2. Compile and run (in Linux) : g++ sha256.cpp mine.cpp -o nonce_finder && ./nonce_finder

Sample Input and Output

Enter the input string: sadfalsfjklasjf
Achieved hash: 0000004A7EE1BDD17BDD83C1BD7CB788CFD3D5EA730D47385273168AB2F5A357
Nonce: 468920
Execution Time: 2.859217seconds

Enter the input string: asdlkfasfjlaskjf
Achieved hash: 00000CC340C935CC931ADFDB99BB9EAB77CEDC4CF32557192E13E07B2CADFE26
Nonce: 559952
Execution Time: 3.588365seconds

Credits

The SHA256 implementation (sha256.cpp and sha256.h) were taken from here