What is the purpose of using salted hashes in security?

Using salted hashes enhances security by making it significantly more challenging to reverse-engineer the original data from the hash value. A salt is a random value added to the input (like a password) before it is hashed. This process ensures that even if two users have the same password, the resulting hash will be different because of the unique salt applied to each password. This technique guards against attacks such as rainbow table attacks, where precomputed tables of hash values can be exploited to quickly find the original input. By including unique salts for each hash, the attacker cannot use these tables effectively, thus increasing the security of password storage and reducing the risk of compromised credentials.

Other options center around goals not aligned with the primary function of salted hashes. For example, while speed in data processing could be a desired characteristic in some systems, it is not the main focus of using salted hashes. Similarly, reducing storage space and creating easy-to-remember passwords do not accurately reflect the underlying purpose and benefit of implementing salted hashes. The emphasis is unequivocally on enhancing security and making it much harder for potential attackers to decipher the hashed data.