title: Is AES a viable solution for creating a hash verification system?
body: <p>I am writing a program that and like to implement data verification system. It needs to return a unique string for any value entered.  My question boils down to: is it possible for an AES function to return the same value for two different entries? The source values will becoming from data held on a magnetic stripe card. </p>
  
  <h1>more details</h1>
  
  <p>I posted this through my phone originally, and I am now just getting back to this post.</p>
  
  <p>I've been looking around the web and while reading <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Wikipedia's article</a> on SHA, I see that SHA-2 (SHA-256/224, SHA-512/384) have no detected collisions (assuming the article is accurate/up-to-date). This is desirable. Any recommendations on what version of SHA-2 I should use?</p>