Hash functions got the name “Hash “ because it’s easy to compute the function with a given input, but nearly impossible to reverse engineer the hash function to get the original input. (True or False)

1 answer

False. The term "hash" in "hash function" doesn't specifically derive from the idea of being easy to compute or difficult to reverse engineer. The word "hash" actually originated from the concept of mixing or chopping up data into smaller pieces, similar to how one might hash food to prepare it for cooking.

In a hash function, it is indeed easy to compute the hash value from an input, and one of the desirable properties is that it should be difficult to reverse the process (finding the original input from the hash), known as pre-image resistance. However, the name "hash" itself does not specifically arise from these properties.