Salting the Hash

What is a salt in hashing?

Random data added to a password before hashing to increase security.

Why does every user get a unique salt?

To ensure that even identical passwords generate different hashes.

How does salting protect against rainbow table attacks?

The added randomness makes precomputed hash tables ineffective.

Does salting stop brute force attacks completely?

No, but it significantly slows down the process by increasing computational effort.