Hash Function

A hash function is an algorithm used in cryptography that accepts an arbitrarily long message (m) as input and maps that message to (what appears to be) a random output that is a fixed size. The output is referred to as the hash or message digest and often written as "H(m)" or "HASH(m)". Popular examples include SHA-256 and MD-5.

Resources: Cryptographic Hash Functions

See Also: Message Digest, Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1, SHA-2, SHA-3)