[Cryptography] SHA-256 decrypted (8 rounds)

[Salz, Rich]

At the risk of beating a dead horse...

>As mentioned before, encryption in its most general meaning is about protecting secrets. In this context it is not function-type specific.

No.  Please find a definition of encryption that does not mention decryption, or the recovery of the original text.

> Let's say you manage a web application's login credentials, and want to make sure your users' actual passwords will not be exposed in case your server/database gets compromised.

> You will be thinking of ways to *encrypt* this data, render it unreadable for an attacker. At this point it is function agnostic.

You will more likely be thinking of a way to *protect* this data.

> It is perfectly fine to ultimately choose to use a cryptographic hash function to this end.

Absolutely, using a digest to protect the data makes sense.  Claiming it encrypts the data is using the term incorrectly, and the knowledgeable members of that community will try to correct you, perhaps a couple of times, before they decide you are not worth spending time with.  I am, of course, using "you" in the hypothetical sense as you first proposed above.