Hashing

Question 1

What is Hashing?

Answer 1

The process of transforming any given key or a string of characters into another value. It takes a variable length message and turns it into a fixed length message. Information is sent to interpret the data. The receiver verifies the data’s integrity and attempts to get the same answer as the sender. The data is disregarded if it does not have the right output.

Question 2

Give some details about Message Digest 5 (MD5).

Answer 2

128-bit
Weakest
Prone to collisions

Question 3

Give some details about Secure Hashing Algorithm – 1 (SHA-1).

Answer 3

Successor to MD5
160-bit
Collision Attacks: tries to find two inputs producing the same hash value, i.e. a hash collision.

Question 4

Give some details about Secure Hashing Algorithm – 2 (SHA-2).

Answer 4

Successor to SHA-1
224, 256, 384, 512 bits
Strongest

Question 5

Give some details about RIPEMD.

Answer 5

Designed as a replacement to MD5
128, 160, 256, 320-bit variants

Question 6

Give some details about Hashed Message Authenticate Code (HMAC).

Answer 6

Data integrity and authenticity
Keyed hashing function
Used with MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-2

Question 7

What is Salting?

Answer 7

A technique to protect passwords stored in databases by adding a string of 32 or more characters.