a hashing algorithm uses search as the type of key.
what type of key does a hashing algorithm use?
search
as computational power increases, the need to make our hashing functions more complex increases. an article that was published in february of 2017 explains how the sha-1 is a weak hashing function as google researchers were able to “to produce two different documents that have the same sha-1 hash signature”. knowing that this is possible is scary to see because this means that anything that uses sha-1 can potentially be penetrated through calculated collisions and time. because of this, it is highly recommended that any application that utilizes sha-1 should be switching over to a stronger hashing algorithm such as sha-256 which hashes to a longer hash value than sha-1. this makes it even more unlikely that a hash collision would occur.
collision (computer science)
hashing is used in database systems as a method to protect sensitive data such as passwords; however it is also used to improve the efficiency of database referencing. inputted data is manipulated by a hashing algorithm. the hashing algorithm converts the inputted data into a string of fixed length that can then be stored in a database. hashing systems have two crucially important characteristics that will now be outlined. firstly, hashes are "unique and repeatable". as an example, running the word "cat" through the same hashing algorithm multiple times will always yield the same hash, however it is extremely difficult to find a word that will return the same hash that "cat" does. secondly, hashing algorithms are not reversible. to relate this back to the example provided above, it would be nearly impossible to convert the output of the hashing algorithm back to the original input, which was "cat". in the context of database encryption, hashing is often used in password systems. when a user first creates their password it is run through a hashing algorithm and saved as a hash. when the user logs back into the website, the password that they enter is run through the hashing algorithm and is then compared to the stored hash. given the fact that hashes are unique, if both hashes match then it is said that the user inputted the correct password. one example of a popular hash function is sha (secure hash algorithm) 256.
database encryption