Fundamentals of Secure Software - Hashing Overview

The video tutorial covers the concept of hashing, explaining it as a one-way irreversible function used in various applications like digital signatures and password storage. It discusses the importance of collision resistance and the use of salting to enhance security. The tutorial also explores different hash functions, including MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2, and SHA-3, highlighting their security levels. Various hash attacks, such as collision and birthday attacks, are explained, along with their implications in digital signatures. The video concludes with a discussion on other cryptographic attacks like brute force and dictionary attacks.

What is the primary purpose of using a salt in hashing?

• To reduce the size of the hash

• To increase the length of the hash

• To make the hash function faster

• To ensure unique hash outputs for identical inputs

Which of the following hash functions is considered the most secure as of now?

• MD5

• SHA-1

• SHA-3

• SHA-2

What is a hash collision attack?

• A method to reverse a hash back to its original input

• An attack that increases the hash length

• An attempt to find two different inputs that produce the same hash

• A technique to speed up the hashing process

In the context of hashing, what does the birthday attack refer to?

• Finding any two inputs that produce the same hash

• Increasing the hash output length

• Reducing the computational time of hashing

• Finding a hash that matches a specific input

How can Alice trick Bob into signing a fraudulent contract using hash functions?

• By creating variations of a fair contract that hash to the same value as the fraudulent one

• By using a longer hash output

• By using a dictionary attack

• By encrypting the hash with a secret key

What is a brute force attack in cryptography?

• An attack that tries many possible passwords to guess the correct one

• An attack that uses a dictionary to find the decryption key

• An attack that uses precomputed tables to reverse hashes

• An attack that finds two inputs with the same hash

What is a rainbow table used for?

• To precompute hash values for cracking password hashes

• To store encrypted passwords

• To generate random salts for hashing

• To increase the security of hash functions