Problems in an unconventional encryption scheme?

Question

My program includes a feature where users could encrypt certain data using a password. As not all passwords will be a proper length, are there any insecurities in fixing this by hashing the password (with a good algorithm) to generate a fixed-length key which will then be fed into AES?

EDIT: Never mind, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_derivation_function

Answer 1

If password is easy to break because it is short - hashing it will not help as all what will be needed is to apply the same hash function during brute force attack. And it may not be possible to make hash function completely secret as it must be exposed at some point to hash the password.