Salting is a cryptographic technique used to enhance the security of stored passwords by adding a unique, random value to each password before hashing. This method prevents attackers from using precomputed tables like rainbow tables to crack passwords and ensures that even if two users have the same password, their stored hashes will differ.

Salting

cryptographic technique

security of stored passwords

Unique random value

Hashing is a process that transforms input data into a fixed-size string of characters, which is typically a hash code, using a hash function. It is widely used in computer science for tasks like data retrieval, cryptography, and ensuring data integrity due to its efficiency and ability to handle large datasets securely.

hashing

attackers

precomputed tables

Rainbow tables are precomputed tables used to reverse cryptographic hash functions, facilitating the cracking of password hashes by providing a time-memory trade-off. They significantly reduce the time required to crack passwords by storing hash chains, but are less effective against salted hashes which add random data to each password before hashing.

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