From the course: Complete Guide to Cybersecurity: A Practical Approach

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Describing hashing algorithms

Describing hashing algorithms

From the course: Complete Guide to Cybersecurity: A Practical Approach

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Describing hashing algorithms

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- [Instructor] Hashing is the process of transforming data of an arbitrary size into a fixed size output called a hash or a message digest. And the hash is typically a unique representation of the original data meaning that even a small change in the input data will resolve in as a significantly different hash value. Now, this is used of course in cryptography to ensure data integrity, message authentication, and digital signatures. Another thing that I want to highlight is that hashing algorithms are designed to be a one way function. So that means that it should be computationally infeasible to reverse engineer the input data from the hash value. Now, hashing is used in a wide range of applications, including password storage, data forensics, blockchain technology, and many others. Another example is whenever a user log into an application or to an operating system, let's say to a Linux system, the system hashes the enter password and then compares it to the store hash to…

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