What is Digest?
Digest is the output or the hash value that is generated from the hash table. In cryptography, diget is also known as message digest because it is generated from the message using the hash function. The size of the digest is fixed for any hash function, which means if any hash function produces a digest of size 5 for a message “m1” then it will always produce a digest of size 5 for any type of message.
We can never generate the original message from the digest because there is no such algorithm that can create the same message from the given digest. We always try to have different digest for different messages. Any hashing algorithm is considered good when it has more difference between digest generated from two different messages.
Whenever we pass the same message to the hash function it produces the same digest. And that is why digest is mostly used to check message integrity after transmission by any network. Now let us understand how we can use message digest to verify the integrity
What is the difference between a digest and a hash function?
Digest and Hash Functions are two important aspects of cryptography. In cryptography, we pass an input text from any algorithm that generates some secured text. Now that algorithm is called a hash function and that secured text is called a digest. From here we can conclude that in cryptography we pass original text from the hash function to generate a digest.