i get that SHA256 isn’t considered “encryption”, it’s something to do with hashing. so, if i encrypt “hello” into a random string of characters, why is it said to be impossible to decrypt it back to “hello”? if you had a maths equation like P = (k * 10 / G) / (4x * 5gl), it’s possible to work backwards to find the value of k or g eventually. why not with SHA256? is it something to do with random numbers?
In: Mathematics
Let’s take a little closer look at the kinds of math you want to reverse. 371 * 921 is pretty easy to compute, 341,691 / 921 is a little harder, even though it is the reverse operation. 4.247^(11) is also a straight forward calculation, but ^(11)√ 8,118,340.5071 is quite a bit harder. Reversible doesn’t mean reversible with the same amount of effort.
Secure hashes like SHA-256 rely on operations that deliberately make the effort going in one direction as disparate as possible from going in the opposite direction. If done well, reversing the hashing operation boils down to guessing numbers until you find a match.
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