11.1.1.5. Hashing

Hashing is used to protect the integrity of the message. It is essentially a one-way algorithm that is capable of creating a fixed-length extract of the message (or document). This extract (hash) is:

  • specific to the given document,

  • changing even a single bit in the document changes the hash,

  • it is not possible to predict how a certain change in the document modifies the hash (that is, it is impossible to predict the hash),

  • it is not possible to recover the original document from the hash.