Salt

ELI5 — The Vibe Check

A salt is random gibberish you add to a password before hashing it so two people with the same password get completely different hashes. Without salt, hackers could pre-compute a giant table of common password hashes and look yours up instantly. Salt ruins that plan.

Real Talk

A cryptographic salt is a random value added to a password before hashing. It ensures that identical passwords produce different hashes, preventing rainbow table attacks. Salts are stored alongside the hash in the database.

Show Me The Code

// Salt is built into bcrypt automatically
import bcrypt from 'bcrypt';
const saltRounds = 10; // cost factor
const salt = await bcrypt.genSalt(saltRounds);
const hash = await bcrypt.hash('password123', salt);
// The salt is embedded in the resulting hash string

When You'll Hear This

"Make sure you're salting passwords before hashing." / "bcrypt handles salt automatically, don't roll your own."