How Does Salting Passwords Make Them More Secure?

Salting passwords is a crucial technique in enhancing the security of stored passwords. When we talk about salting passwords, we refer to the process of adding a random value (salt) to each password before hashing it. This additional step significantly increases the complexity and strength of passwords, making them more secure. Here's how salting passwords make them more secure:

1. Unique Hashing: By adding a unique salt to each password, even if two users have the same password, their hashed values will be different due to the individual salts. This means that attackers cannot easily identify identical passwords in the database.
2. Protection Against Precomputed Tables: Precomputed tables like rainbow tables are often used by attackers to crack passwords. Salting disrupts these tables because each password will have a different salt, rendering precomputed attacks ineffective.
3. Increased Complexity: Salting increases the complexity of passwords by adding a random and unique value to each password. This makes it harder for attackers to use techniques like brute force or dictionary attacks to guess passwords.

Overall, salting passwords is a simple yet effective method to significantly enhance password security and protect user credentials from unauthorized access.