Cryptographic hash functions (CHF)

A Cryptographic Hash Function (CHF) is an algorithm that maps data of an arbitrary size to bit array of a fixed size. A few properties of CHF's are:

1. They are deterministic - the function will produce the same result on the same input data regardless of how many times its run.
2. They are irreversible - the fixed set of bits produced cannot be reversed to the data it was produced from.
3. They are feasibly unique - it is infeasible to find two different messages with the same hash value.
4. Reflects changes well - a small change to the data produces significantly different hash values, such that, they appear un-correlated to the original hash value.

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