Encryption: Encryption is the process of encoding plain text or any information so that only authorized people can read it with a corresponding key, protecting confidential data from unauthorized persons. Hashing: Hashing converts any amount of data into a fixed-length hash that cannot be reversed. It is widely used in cryptography. The hash allows us to validate if the input has changed even slightly; if it has, the resulting hash will be different. Salting: In cryptography, a salt is random data used as an additional input to a one-way function that hashes data, such as a password. Salts are used to keep passwords safe while they are being stored.
| Same password | + | Different salt | Same Hashing Function | = | Different output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "gwW$3zHw" | + | 12gT3 | SHA256 Hash | = | "12d6a36ff1ffba1d24fd3ac0d270315bef3c3de4f6765b8788301f9fd57c084e" |
| "gwW$3zHw" | + | 97xH7 | SHA256 Hash | = | "3820b409b311a3534dcc30bbaa11f0ff5ce064fb476647ede393c8d94937ae15" |
In this article, we will learn the Salted Password Hashing technique. This technique involves converting an algorithm to map data of any size to a fixed length.
To store anything in a computer, you must first encode it, i.e. convert it to bytes. For example:
- If you want to store music, you must first encode it using MP3, WAV, etc.
- If you want to store a picture, you must first encode it using PNG, JPEG, etc.
- If you want to store text, you must first encode it using ASCII, UTF-8, etc.
In Python, a byte string is just that: a sequence of bytes. It isn't human-readable. Under the hood, everything must be converted to a byte string before it can be stored in a computer.
On the other hand, a character string, often just called a "string," is a sequence of characters that is human-readable. A character string can't be directly stored in a computer; it has to be encoded first (converted into a byte string). Multiple encodings, such as ASCII and UTF-8, allow a character string to be converted into a byte string.
Encoding and decoding are inverse operations. Everything must be encoded before it can be written to disk, and it must be decoded before it can be read by a human.
In Python, a byte string is represented by a b, followed by the byte string's ASCII representation.
A byte string can be decoded back into a character string if you know the encoding that was used to encode it.
Example of a string:
my_string = "This string, will be stored as a string"bytes = b'...' literals = a sequence of bytes. A “byte” is the smallest integer type addressable on a computer, which is nearly universally an octet or 8-bit unit, thus allowing numbers between 0 and 255.
Example of a byte string:
my_byte_string = b"This is a byte string It will be stored as a sequence of bytes".Hashing is used mainly to protect a password from hackers. Suppose a website is hacked, and cybercriminals don’t get access to your password. Instead, they get access to the encrypted “hash” created by the method of hashing.
Historically, only the password’s cryptographic hash function was maintained on a system, but over time, additional precautions were developed to prevent the identification of duplicate or common passwords. One such prevention is salting.
The BCrypt Algorithm is a Python library used to hash and salt passwords securely. It enables the creation of a password protection layer that can develop local hardware innovation to protect against long-term hazards or threats, such as attackers having the computational capacity to guess passwords twice as efficiently.
All the necessary code snippets for this task are found in example.py.