Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Rust

Message digestion

Message digests are created as a way to guarantee authenticity; if a message was sent, a digest or signature of this message provides an ability to check whether the message has been tampered with. Typically, the signature will therefore be transmitted differently than the original message.

Obviously, this requires the hashing function to adhere to some basic rules to be considered good, listed as follows:

• A signature has to be quick and easy to obtain regardless of message size
• The signature can only have a fixed length
• The function has to minimize collisions

The hash functions contained in this group are the most popular ones and are the objective of many security researchers: MD5, SHA-1/2/3, or Adler 32. Adler 32 is ...