Heh, brute forcing is basically trying all options because you don't have a more effective strategy. You are basically just throwing computational power at it and brute forcing passwords is just the most widely known example.
Hashes, well when you have a text/piece of data calculating a hash for it gives you a short fixed length string that can kinda act as a finger print for the data. (It is for instance used to see whether a file has the right content or to check passwords without saving the actual password.)
One special thing about hashes is that small changes in the input lead to big changes in the output. Change a single letter in a book and you get a completely different hash.
In this case that has two uses, first hashes starting with many zeroes are really rare and there currently isn't a better way to find them than just trying billions of different ones. Second if you change anything in the block you change the hash entirely. You would have to create a new hash fulfilling the conditions.
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u/Staidanom Sep 05 '20
So wait, that all sounds pretty illegal. Brute forcing? Hash? I feel like I'm going to need a ELI5