Upgrade Red Hat / CentOS 5 Password Hashing | By default, Red Hat / CentOS 5 uses the largely less desirable md5 algorithm for local account password hashing. Bah! Debian / Ubuntu : you are already using SHA-512 – yay! Be sure to mock your fellow Red Hat friends on this topic. (Note: the new Red Hat / CentOS 6 is now SHA-512 by