From the course: CISA Cert Prep: 5 Information Asset Protection for IS Auditors

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Cryptography: Hash algorithms and digital signatures

Cryptography: Hash algorithms and digital signatures

From the course: CISA Cert Prep: 5 Information Asset Protection for IS Auditors

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Cryptography: Hash algorithms and digital signatures

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- [Instructor] Alright, let's talk about hash algorithms and digital signatures, ooh. Alright, so, a hash algorithm, isn't like an encryption algorithm that we've been talking about before. It's something that takes a variable length input, let's say a message, or a string, or a character, or even a full hard drive of data, and it generates a fixed length message digest as output, or a hash value sometimes we call it. But technically, the things that hash algorithms create are called message digest, or MDs. Now, it provides integrity, that's what we use hash algorithms for. It makes sure that nothing has been changed in a file. It creates this fixed length message digest, and if any of the input changes, if we change the file in any way, or we change the input in any way, we get a completely different resulting message digest, or value as our output. There's no confidentiality provided, nothing's getting encrypted. They're going to leave the message intact, it would be more accurate…

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