Basics about Hashing in cryptography

Hashing

Hashing is an algorithm used in blockchain technology and other cryptographic controls. It is a process of using an algorithm to map data or to scramble it of any size to a fixed length.

That fixed length string contains of numbers and characters known as hash or hash value.

As told, this hashing algorithm is used more in cryptography for encrypting keys or messages. Encryption is meant to protect data in transit, whereas hashing is meant to protect them at rest, that is to verify or check-sum that data or file is not altered and is authentic. Encryption is a two way function using the public key, whereas hashing is a one way function only, so that the text can not be unscrambled and decoded by anyone. 

Common hashing algorithms are such as MD4, MD5, CRC-32, SHA etc.

MD5: Known as Message Digest 5 and is an one way cryptographic hash algorithm used to verify data integrity.  The MD5 message-digest algorithm is a widely used cryptographic hash function producing a 128-bit (16-byte) hash value, normally expressed as a 32 digit hexadecimal number.

Example of one hash file.

Let I have to add MD5 hash value to the word “Vine”. The output hash file will be as: a77b51765620b8b0c50236e9ea8907ab

Confusing? Yes it can be. Because normal people can not make this combination. We ideally use a HASH generator. There is a MD5 hash generator. This MD5 hash generator is useful for encoding passwords, credit cards numbers and other sensitive date into MySQL, Postgress or other databases. This tool provides a quick and easy way to encode an MD5 hash from a simple string of up to 256 characters in length.

Secure hashing algorithms (SHA) are many types and are published by NIST and NSA. Some of the SHA types are, SHA-0, SHA-1, SHA-2, SHA-3, SHA-256.

SHA-1 is a cryptographic hash algorithm, which generates a 160-bit string value as the hash value. It is commonly used in security and data integrity applications. This hashing algorithm was developed by the National Security Agency (NSA). In case of SHA-256, it creates 256 bit (32 bytes) of string value as the hash value.

Advantages of Hashing

• Hashing provides more reliable and flexible data retrieval method.
• Digital forensic experts use hashing value in case of verifying images and other documents during their investigation.
• Password storing and verification.

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-DR