A cryptographic hash function is a deterministic procedure that takes an arbitrary block of data and returns a fixed-size bit string, the (cryptographic) hash-value, such that an accidental or intentional change to data will change the hash-value.
In MiniBluebox a cryptographic hash function takes Master Key as an input and internally generates a very large hash-value from it. If your Master Key changes slightly, a vastly different hash-value is generated.
An example could explain these concepts better. Lets say we have a Master Key specified as "Hello world". Then if we engage the hash function used in MiniBluebox, we would obtain the corresponding hash-value as follows:
49, 223, 112, 226, 131, 160, 109, 211, 187, 84, 126, 90, 206, 129, 158, 236, 120, 58, 102, 84, 187, 60, 126, 137, 25, 9, 56, 121, 85, 59, 230, 139, 139, 33, 165, 37, 229, 126, 239, 196, 170, 11, 5, 229, 178, 119, 179, 180, 159, 46, 70, 94, 219, 255, 143, 184, 80, 176, 158, 131, 253, 57, 119, 161
Note that each number in this series varies between 0 to 255. As a whole they make an enormously large number of 64 bytes (512-bits). In other words this is a sequential representation of a very large hash-value. Note also how randomly distributed the values are. There is no obvious corelation that you can work out the originating Master Key value, i.e. "Hello world" from these numbers.
Lets vary the Master Key slightly. Lets make it "Hello worle". This is really a small change as the bit difference between the former Master Key and the new one is just 1 bit. Now lets run the same hash function. It will produce the following 64-byte Hash Value:
81, 106, 25, 16, 17, 123, 116, 167, 176, 189, 228, 136, 214, 87, 30, 223, 222, 243, 77, 84, 35, 124, 119, 237, 77, 221, 70, 69, 80, 181, 1, 133, 189, 69, 39, 97, 232, 247, 222, 191, 136, 242, 215, 253, 114, 198, 195, 163, 31, 75, 227, 5, 246, 55, 164, 121, 206, 205, 106, 201, 183, 110, 41, 23
Note how a small change produced a big difference. Hash-values generated have no obvious correlation despite close proximity of originating Master Keys.