Define ‘Cryptographic Hash Function’ and Its Key Properties

A cryptographic hash function is a mathematical algorithm that takes an input of any size (data, text, etc.) and produces a fixed-size, unique string of characters called a hash or digest. Key properties include: it must be deterministic (same input always yields the same output); it must be collision-resistant (it is computationally infeasible to find two different inputs that produce the same output); and it must be a one-way function (it is infeasible to reverse the process and derive the input from the output).