This class defines the
Service Provider Interface (
SPI) for the
MessageDigest
class, which provides the functionality of a message digest algorithm, such as MD5 or SHA. Message digests are secure one-way hash functions that take arbitrary-sized data and output a fixed-length hash value.
All the abstract methods in this class must be implemented by a cryptographic service provider who wishes to supply the implementation of a particular message digest algorithm.
Implementations are free to implement the Cloneable interface.