![]() But intrepid hackers can try and find the secret language, pushing a slew of words through coding, and then compare those results with hashed passwords. You really can't reverse engineer a hash. Think of these then as phrases that have been encoded into a secret language. So that's why many companies will say, if they've been breached, that while their database was captured, it contained hashed passwords. "If you use the more simple implementation, and not have hashed at all, and a password data base is breached, everyone's password is fairly accessible," Arve Kjoelen, chief information security officer at McAfee told GearBrain. Why would you want to use a hash? If a password is just stored as plain text, then if a hacker gained access to that data they would have the keys to your account - and potentially others if you've reused that password in other places. Basically you're mincing up your data, and creating a fixed output. Hashing is a way of transforming your password into a unique identifier and fingerprint that are hard to invert and essentially reverse. Hashing transforms your password from plain text to a new output Getty Images/iStock Even if you use a password manager to securely store your own credentials, hopefully the places where you go online are taking these security measures too. Here are the differences between the three, and most keenly why you should want to make sure that the companies you entrust with your business, also take steps to protect your information too. All three can be used together - often they're not - but even one step one can help to lock down your special word, phrase or string of characters even more. That process is called hashing, with a second step, called salting, and a third called peppering. ![]() ![]() Often, though, the password you diligently remember when you order groceries for the week, has been stored in a way that protects you fairly well. Data breaches are a nearly daily occurrence, with passwords and other personal data captured by hackers from the companies where you shop, eat and bank. ![]()
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