Salt

Noun · Development

Definitions

  1. A random value appended or prepended to a password before hashing, ensuring that identical passwords produce different hash outputs. Salts defeat precomputed attacks like rainbow tables and are stored alongside the hash in the database, typically as a per-user unique value.

    In plain English: Random data added to a password before scrambling it, so that two people with the same password still get different stored values.

    Example: "bcrypt generates a unique salt per password automatically, so even two users with the same password end up with completely different hashes."

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