Basics of Hashing and Cryptography

This step will explain the basics of hashing and cryptography, and how these concepts relate to passwords security.

Passwords are never encrypted, they are hashed. That means that fixed bits of information are converted into unique, fixed-length strings of seemingly random letters and numbers. Hashes are generated by hashing algorithms. There are many types of hash functions, with different degrees of strengths. One-way hash functions are usually used to store passwords. Others, like MD5 do not have great strength, while SHA2 is much better. This video will further explain the difference between hashing and encryption.