Password cracking programs reverse the hashing process to recover passwords. (True/False.)

This is incorrect because hashing functions are specifically designed to be irreversible; direct mathematical reversal of a hash to plaintext is not possible.

Hashing is a one-way cryptographic function designed to be computationally infeasible to reverse, meaning you cannot directly derive the original plaintext password from its hash. Password cracking programs work by computing hashes of guessed passwords (e.g., from dictionaries or brute-force attempts) and then comparing those computed hashes to the target hash to find a match.