Pro Active Directory Certificate Services: Creating and Managing Digital Certificates for Use in Microsoft Networks

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022

L. E. HughesPro Active Directory Certificate Serviceshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7486-6_2

2. Basic Cryptography: Hash Function

Lawrence E. Hughes¹  

(1)

Frisco, TX, USA

 

There is another type of cryptographic algorithm similar to encryption, but with several very important differences. The technical term for this is hash function . It is sometimes also called a message digest algorithm. Technically though, the algorithm is a hash function, and the output of that function is a message digest.

Here, the object is not to hide information by scrambling it in a reversible manner, but to characterize a digital document (of any length) with a single large number ...