page_title: Cryptographic hash function
hierarchical_section_title: Cryptographic hash function
context_page_description: A cryptographic hash function is a mathematical algorithm that maps data of arbitrary size to a bit array of a fixed size. It is a one-way function, that is, a function which is practically infeasible to invert. Ideally, the only way to find a message that produces a given hash is to attempt a brute-force search of possible inputs to see if they produce a match, or use a rainbow table of matched hashes. Cryptographic hash functions are a basic tool of modern cryptography.
  The ideal cryptographic hash function has the following main properties:
  it is deterministic, meaning that the same message always results in the same hash
  it is quick to compute the hash value for any given message
  it is infeasible to generate a message that yields a given hash value
  it is infeasible to find two different messages with the same hash value
  a small change to a message should change the hash value so extensively that the new hash value appears uncorrelated with the old hash value
  Cryptographic hash functions have many information-security applications, notably in digital signatures, message authentication codes, and other forms of authentication.
context_section_description: A cryptographic hash function (CHF) is a mathematical algorithm that maps data of arbitrary size (often called the "message") to a bit array of a fixed size (the "hash value", "hash", or "message digest"). It is a one-way function, that is, a function which is practically infeasible to invert. Ideally, the only way to find a message that produces a given hash is to attempt a brute-force search of possible inputs to see if they produce a match, or use a rainbow table of matched hashes. Cryptographic hash functions are a basic tool of modern cryptography.
  The ideal cryptographic hash function has the following main properties:
  it is deterministic, meaning that the same message always results in the same hash
  it is quick to compute the hash value for any given message
  it is infeasible to generate a message that yields a given hash value (i.e. to reverse the process that generated the given hash value)
  it is infeasible to find two different messages with the same hash value
  a small change to a message should change the hash value so extensively that the new hash value appears uncorrelated with the old hash value (avalanche effect)
  Cryptographic hash functions have many information-security applications, notably in digital signatures, message authentication codes (MACs), and other forms of authentication. They can also be used as ordinary hash functions, to index data in hash tables, for fingerprinting, to detect duplicate data or uniquely identify files, and as checksums to detect accidental data corruption. Indeed, in information-security contexts, cryptographic hash values are sometimes called (digital) fingerprints, checksums, or just hash values, even though all these terms stand for more general functions with rather different properties and purposes.
caption: A cryptographic hash function (specifically SHA-1) at work. A small change in the input (in the word "over") drastically changes the output (digest). This is the so-called avalanche effect.