> It's important to remember that we are not encrypting the text here.
Thank you for emphasizing this. Many junior devs have been bitten by not being told early enough the difference between encryption (requires a secret to be reversed), hashing (cannot be reversed) and encoding (can always be trivially reversed).
Also good to know that while the output looks random, it follows the same entropy as the input. Ie: don't base64 encode your password to make it stronger.
Thank you for emphasizing this. Many junior devs have been bitten by not being told early enough the difference between encryption (requires a secret to be reversed), hashing (cannot be reversed) and encoding (can always be trivially reversed).
Also good to know that while the output looks random, it follows the same entropy as the input. Ie: don't base64 encode your password to make it stronger.