Chapter 3: File and Password Hashing with Node.js

In Chapter 1, Cryptography for Developers, we introduced and listed all the cryptographic operations we'll be analyzing, including hashing, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, and digital signatures. In this chapter, we shall dive straight into the first of those: hashing.

Among the various classes of operations we'll be looking at in this book, hashing is possibly the most used one. Chances are you are already familiar with hashing at least to a degree, likely having used functions such as MD5, SHA-1, or those in the SHA-2 family previously.

Hashing's widespread and mainstream adoption in computing is a consequence of the many ways it can be used. As we'll see in this chapter, these functions help solve a wide variety of problems, including calculating checksums and verifying the integrity of documents, deriving encryption keys, storing passwords, and more.

Throughout this chapter, we'll be learning...