Building Enterprise JavaScript Applications

Cryptographic hash functions

However, MD5 is not a suitable algorithm for hashing passwords because although the digests look like gibberish, there are now tools that can use the digest to reverse-engineer the password. To hash passwords, we need to use a special class of hash functions called cryptographic hash functions, which have the following special properties:

• Deterministic: Given the same message, they will always produce the same digest.

• One-way: The message, or a part of the message, cannot be reverse-engineered from the digest. The only way to obtain the original message from the hash is to try every possible value for the message to see if the generated hash matches.
• Exhibits the avalanche effect: A small change in the message ...