The process of applying a salt and cryptographic hash to a password then repeating the process many times is known as which of the following?
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A. B. C. D.C.
The process of applying a salt and cryptographic hash to a password then repeating the process many times is known as key stretching. Key stretching is a method of making a password more secure by increasing its length and complexity through the use of cryptographic functions.
A salt is a random value added to a password before it is hashed. This salt value ensures that even if two users have the same password, their salted and hashed passwords will be different. This prevents attackers from using precomputed tables, such as rainbow tables, to crack the passwords.
A cryptographic hash is a mathematical function that takes input data and produces a fixed-length string of characters. The output of the hash function is known as a hash value or message digest. The hash function is one-way, meaning it is easy to compute the hash value from the input data, but it is practically impossible to compute the original input data from the hash value.
By repeating the process of salting and hashing the password many times, the password becomes more secure because it takes more time and computational power for an attacker to guess the original password. This process is called key stretching.
Collision resistance is a property of cryptographic hash functions that ensures it is difficult to find two different inputs that produce the same hash output. Rainbow tables are precomputed tables used to crack password hashes. Brute force attack is an attack method that involves guessing passwords until the correct one is found.
Therefore, the correct answer is C. Key stretching.