Cryptography Questions
A cryptographic hash function is a mathematical algorithm that takes an input (or message) and produces a fixed-size string of characters, which is typically a hash value or hash code. This hash value is unique to the input data, meaning even a small change in the input will result in a significantly different hash value. Cryptographic hash functions are designed to be fast and efficient in generating the hash value, while also being extremely difficult to reverse-engineer or find the original input data from the hash value. They are commonly used in various security applications, such as password storage, digital signatures, and data integrity verification.