You already know what the three transformations are — you built that vocabulary in data-representation-fundamentals and cryptography-fundamentals. The skill this lesson adds is recognition by sight: given a real string from a browser or a database, which transformation produced it?
That question has immediate practical value. Beginners often label any unreadable string "encrypted." In practice the string is far more likely to be merely encoded — meaning anyone can reverse it with no key — or hashed — meaning it cannot be reversed at all. Calling an encoded value "encrypted" leads to false confidence; calling a hash "encrypted" means looking for a key that does not exist.
In this lesson you will:
- Recognize a stored password hash by its length and character set, and name the algorithm.
- Apply the three-transformation distinctions in two short quizzes.
Estimated time: 15 minutes.
When you are ready, send the Continue signal.