Salted secured hash algorithm helps protect password hashes against dictionary attacks by introducing additional randomness. Password hash salting is when random data – a salt – is used as an additional input to a hash function that hashes a password. The goal of salting is to defend against dictionary attacks or attacks against hashed passwords using a rainbow table.
To salt a password hash, a new salt is randomly generated for each password. The salt and the password are concatenated and then processed with a cryptographic hash function. The resulting output (but not the original password) is stored with the salt in a database.
Since salts do not have to be memorized by humans they can make the size of the rainbow table required for a successful attack prohibitively large. Since salts are different in each password, they also protect commonly used passwords or those who use the same password on several sites, by making all salted hash instances for the same password different from each other.
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