Rainbow tables are password cracking tools with origins dating back to research from the early 1980s. Here's how they work and why they haven't stood the test of time.

A cryptographic hash function is a mathematical algorithm that takes an input (or 'message') and returns a fixed-length string of characters ...

The MD5 password hash algorithm is "no longer considered safe" by the original software developer, a day after the leak of more than 6.4 million hashed LinkedIn passwords.

A hash rate is the measure of the computational power in a proof-of-work cryptocurrency miner, pool, or network. High hash rates equal better odds of winning.

Researchers have found a new way to attack the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, still used to sign almost one in three SSL certificates that secure major websites, making it more urgent than ever to ...

SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) dates back to 1995 and has been known to be vulnerable to theoretical attacks since 2005.

NIST has opened a competition to develop a new cryptographic hash algorithm, a tool that converts a file, message or block of data to a short "fingerprint" for use in digital signatures, message ...

Because hashing algorithms works in one direction, the only way to obtain the corresponding plaintext is to guess, a process that can require large amounts of time and computational resources. The ...