Concepts
Hashing
In Turkish: Özetleme (hash)
A one-way scramble that turns a password into a fixed code, so a service can check it without keeping the real password.
Instead of storing your password, a careful service stores its hash. When you sign in, it hashes what you typed and compares the two. A hash cannot be turned back into the password, but weak passwords can still be guessed by trying many candidates.
This is why a leaked list of hashes is still bad news if your password is short or common, and less worrying if it is long and unique.
What to do
- Use long, unique passwords so a leaked hash is hard to crack.
- Change a password if a service says its hashes leaked and yours was weak.
- Be wary of services that can email your actual password back; that means it was stored in plain form.