In this tutorial, you will learn what is Hashing in Cyber Security, its types, its benefits, and more.
Introduction
Hashing is a process used to verify data integrity and authenticate identity in cyber security. It’s also known as hashing verification or simply as hashing. It’s a technique used to verify data is unchanged. It checks the integrity of data by creating a unique, fixed-length output that can be used to identify the original document again if there is any change or alteration of the data.
What is Hashing in the Context of Cyber Security?
Hashing in cyber security is an algorithmic process that maps documents (or any other digital files) into an array of fixed-length digital codes called hashes or Checksums. These hashes are often referred to as digital fingerprints because they’re like a user-friendly version of a CRC32 code. The output of any password cracking software almost always comes in the form of hashes, which you can think of as representing the strength of the password.
What is Password Cracking?
Password cracking is an attempt to discover the password that was used to protect a computer system or network. A cracker will typically use a variety of techniques to try to deduce the password, including a brute-force attack. A brute-force attack involves trying every possible combination of letters and numbers until the correct one is found.
In most cases, you shouldn’t ever have to worry about cracking passwords yourself. Instead, you should focus on creating strong passwords and storing them in a secure way so that others can’t find them if they ever try to crack your password. Protecting against password cracking attempts is an important part of computer security.
You can do this by choosing strong passwords, creating unique passwords for each account that you have, and storing them in a secure way so that others can’t find them if they ever try to crack your password.
Types of Hashing in Cyber Security
The following are the types of hashing in cyber security:
- Salting: Salting is a process of adding random numbers or letters to the user's password before hashing. This technique makes the password harder to crack.
- Brute force attack: A brute force attack is an attempt to crack a password using a computer. In other words, the computer tries every possible combination of letters and numbers until the correct one is found.
- Dictionary attack: A dictionary attack is like a brute force attack, but the computer only tries letters and numbers you might use in your own password (like 12345, qwerty, etc.).
- Rainbow table: This is a look-up table of pre-computed hashes. It can be used to crack a password when the password has been hashed and salted.
- Rules: These include Minimum length, Maximum length, and the Requirement that it be a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.
Benefits of Hashing in Cyber Security
Hashing is used to verify the integrity of data in cyber security. It checks the data for any change or alteration. This technique is often used to authenticate the identity of a user. Hashing is a one-way function. It is irreversible. Once you have the hash value there is no way to get the original document or data back. Hashing plays a vital role in cyber security. It is used to protect data and information in the following ways:
- Confidentiality of data: Hashing creates a fixed-length output that can be used to authenticate the data is the same. This fixed-length output will be the same even if you change or alter the original data. Along with the fixed-length output, hashing also creates a unique value. This unique value is used to identify the original data if any changes or alterations are done.
- Integrity of data: This technique verifies the data has not been altered in any way. If you want to check the integrity of data, you can use hashing. With hashing, you can check whether there is any change or alteration in the data.
- Authenticate identity: You can authenticate the identity of a user by generating a fixed-length output from the user's data. This fixed-length output will be the same for all users. If the user data and the fixed-length output are not the same, then the user is not genuine.
- Non-repudiation: This means a user cannot deny the authenticity of any data or information. If you use hashing, the user cannot deny the authenticity of the data or information because the hash value is unique.
Limitations of Hashing in Cyber Security
The following are the limitations of having in cyber security:
- Hashing is irreversible: Once you have created a hash value, there is no way to recreate the original data or information. If a user forgets his password, there is no way to get his password back. Even you can't get his password back.
- Hashing is less secure when used as a primary technique: Hashing is not highly secure as a single technique for safeguarding data. You can use hashing to authenticate the identity of a user. However, you can use hashing in combination with other techniques to increase its overall effectiveness.
- Hashing is relatively slow when compared to encryption: You may find that hashing takes less time than the time taken by encryption. However, hashing is less secure than encryption. When you use encryption, you need to enter a special key to decrypt the information. This key is only known to authorized users.
Conclusion
Hashing is a popular process used in cyber security to verify data integrity and authenticate identity. It’s also known as hashing verification or simply as hashing. It’s a technique used to verify data is unchanged. It checks the integrity of data by creating a unique, fixed-length output that can be used to identify the original document again if there is any change or alteration of the data. Hashing is an algorithmic process that maps documents (or any other digital files) into an array of fixed-length digital codes called hashes or Checksums. These hashes are often referred to as digital fingerprints because they’re like a user-friendly version of a CRC32 code.