what is hashing and when do you use it

Question

Its different then regular encryption right?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Easiest example of hashing is keeping track of these 5 numbers:

0123985761325

3412353

31512346143654

By just remembering which digit they end in. 5, 3, 4. Those hashes are easier to keep track of. If you get a hash of a new number that’s 6, you know it’s not a match of anything else you have. It loses data and you can’t get it back so it’s really not encryption.

That hash algo of “what’s the last digit?” is lame and collisions are abundant. A good algo has improbable collisions and is very difficult to make a target hash.

They’re used to verify nothing changed in big files, identify duplicates, and databases.