Question 1

Why are some hashes easier to crack than others?

Accepted Answer

Hash speed determines cracking difficulty. MD5 and SHA-1 are designed to be fast — GPUs can compute billions per second. Password hashing algorithms like bcrypt and Argon2 are intentionally slow (100ms+ per hash), making brute-force attacks impractical even with powerful hardware.

Question 2

What is a dictionary attack?

Accepted Answer

A dictionary attack tries common passwords (from leaked databases and wordlists) against a hash. Since most people use predictable passwords, dictionary attacks crack the majority of MD5/SHA hashes within seconds. Salting and slow hash functions are the defenses.

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