👉 Password computing involves the generation, storage, and verification of passwords through cryptographic methods. When a user creates a password, it is typically transformed using a hashing algorithm, which converts the plaintext password into a fixed-length string of characters, known as a hash. This process is one-way; it's computationally infeasible to reverse the hash back into the original password. To verify a password, the system hashes the entered password and compares it to the stored hash; if they match, the password is considered correct. Password hashing algorithms like bcrypt, scrypt, and Argon2 are designed to be slow and resource-intensive, making brute-force attacks more difficult. Additionally, salting is often used to add a unique random value to each password before hashing, further enhancing security by preventing attackers from using precomputed hash tables (rainbow tables) to crack passwords.
