3 years ago

Category: Database, Security, Data

Bcrypt is a key derivation function, which can be thought of as a slow hash function. Its purpose is to slowly convert a piece of input data to a fixed-size, deterministic, and unpredictable output. A common use-case is to convert a password into an n-bit cryptographic key, which can then be used for safe authentication.

Bcrypt is a very popular password hashing function, so much so that it’s the hash function we currently teach the implementation of in our Practical Cryptography course.

Bcrypt can be visualized with the following Go-like pseudo code: As you can see, Bcrypt depends heavily on the Blowfish cipher.