Glossary
Hashing
Hashing turns your password into a scrambled string. The same password always gives the same hash, but you can't reverse it to get the password back. That's why sites store password hashes, not actual passwords.
What is Hashing?
A one-way cryptographic function that converts data into a fixed-size string, used for password storage and data integrity verification.
Why Should You Care?
Hashing is critical because it prevents attackers from recovering plaintext passwords even if they breach a database. When organizations store password hashes instead of actual passwords, a breach no longer immediately exposes user credentials that could be reused on other services. This protects both the company from liability and user trust, and users from credential-stuffing attacks.
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Real-World Example
During the 2012 LinkedIn breach, attackers stole millions of password hashes. Because LinkedIn used unsalted SHA-1 hashing, which lacks computational protections, attackers could rapidly crack weak passwords using rainbow tables and GPU acceleration. Sites using salted, slow hash functions like bcrypt during that era fared far better—individual hashes would take far longer to crack, leaving users substantially safer even after a database compromise.
How to Protect Against Hashing
- 1.
Use strong hashing (bcrypt, Argon2) for passwords
- 2.
Never use MD5 or SHA1 for password storage
Related Terms
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