Introduction Cryptography is a branch of mathematics concerned with keeping messages secure.
Cryptographic algorithms are the basic building blocks upon which protocols are built.
A hash function is an algorithm which maps infinitely long input into a fixed size output. A collision is said to have occurred when two unique inputs produce the same output. Checksums , such as CRC-32, are an example of hashing algorithms. These are used to detect data corruption when transfering information. It produces a short, fixed-length data block with which you can check to see if you received the data correctly.