What is the Hash Function?
The Hash Function is one of the important parts of cryptography. It takes input messages and converts them into some fixed-size text. That’s why it is used to provide security to input value.
Hash Function is called so because it hashes the input value. That means it produces a fixed value text or number that is called a hash value and that hash value is usually the index of the hash table where the input text will be stored. So one aspect of Hash Function is to find the location where that input text will be stored. So hash function can do perfect memory management of data by providing the location of storage to every data.
Hashing should not be treated as Encryption because the message that is encrypted can be later decrypted to get the original message. But in hashing once we generate the hash value it can’t be converted back into the original message. So the steps of encryption can be reversed but the steps of hashing can’t be reversed. Yes, but we can get the original message if it is stored at the index equal to the hash value in the hash table, but directly we can’t get the original message from the hash value.
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.