Tagged Questions

2
votes
3answers
56 views

User specified iteration count

I'm working on a PHP authentication and registration system following the standard salt+password = 'auth hash' and using the plaintext/unencrypted username as the lookup field on the initial query. ...
5
votes
2answers
194 views

Why is 8ms a goal for hashing?

I'm currently developing a small project in PHP, and as it involves user authentication, I've been researching what options I've got regarding hashing. I've settled on PBKDF2 primarily due to it's ...
6
votes
3answers
233 views

Increase the security of an already stored password hash

Right now we're using 1024 byte PBKDF2 with 256 byte user-specific salt and variable iterations. However, I would much prefer to be able to, perhaps once every year or two, to be able to flat out ...
2
votes
1answer
163 views

Improving Digest Authentication using PBKDF2

For a variety of reasons, I need to use digest authentication for a REST server that I have created. I have come up with an "improvement" that I believe strengthens the algorithm against MD5 attacks ...
2
votes
3answers
210 views

Client-Side Hashing to decrease value of password guessing heuristics

Yes, this is 'yet another client-side hashing' question. But, don't leave yet, I think there is some value here. I'd like to do something to mitigate the affect on the community as a whole when my ...
3
votes
1answer
128 views

Key length and hash function in PBKDF2

On this page: http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.0/libdoc/openssl/rdoc/OpenSSL/PKCS5.html they make a statement that strikes me as rather weird: Key Length Specifies the length in bytes of ...
5
votes
4answers
479 views

Gold Standard for password hashing

I've developing a web application that will be dealing with highly sensitive information and I want to ensure the hashing of passwords is gold standard. Ideally I'd go for per-user salted SHA512 ...
3
votes
6answers
292 views

Is there a table that compares hashing algorithms by speed, relatively (machine independent)

As far as I understood*, one of the major criteria when choosing a password / salt hashing algorithm is it's speed. To prevent brute force attacks, a slower algorithm is better (and also makes it more ...
2
votes
1answer
177 views

Is there a better way to take advantage of current 'approved', 'proven', and memory/cpu-expensive algorithms while using salts and peppers?

I've read about the concepts presented in these two questions: Pre-hash password before applying bcrypt to avoid restricting password length Would it make sense to use Bcrypt and PBKDF2 together? I ...
6
votes
6answers
753 views

Client side password hashing

Edit: Updated to put more emphasis on the goal - peace of mind for the user, and not beefing up the security. After reading through a few discussions here about client side hashing of passwords, I'm ...
3
votes
5answers
275 views

What about combining pkdf2 with scrypt? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Would it make sense to use Bcrypt and PBKDF2 together? How does the following password hashing scheme look to you? iterations1 = scrypt iterations required to spend ...
0
votes
0answers
70 views

Recomended hash algorithm [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: How to securely hash passwords? Do any security experts recommend bcrypt for password storage? What would you choose between: PBKDF2 SHA256 (270,000 iterations) ...
2
votes
1answer
1k views

Is PBKDF2 only SHA1 in C#?

I can't find a way of specifying the hashing algorithm used by the PBKDF2 (the Rfc2898DeriveBytes class) implementation in C# System.Security.Cryptography. It seems to be just SHA1. Am I missing ...
7
votes
2answers
805 views

With PBKDF2, what is an optimal Hash size in bytes? What about the size of the salt?

When creating a hash with PBKDF2, it allows the developer to choose the size of the hash. Is longer always better? Also, what about the size of the random salt? Should that be the same size as the ...
4
votes
3answers
373 views

Trying to understand password hashing

I am trying to get a grasp of password hashing. Back in the days it seemed so simple, just MD5(password + salt) and you are done. Then md5 was proven to have collisions so people started moving to ...
4
votes
3answers
2k views

What's the advantage of using PBKDF2 vs SHA256 to generate an AES encryption key from a passphrase?

I'm looking at two comprable pieces of software which need to encrypt data on disk using a passphrase. One uses PBKDF2 to generate the encryption key from a passphrase, while the other uses two rounds ...
4
votes
3answers
311 views

How should I choose a difficulty factor for my password hashing function?

Assuming that I'm doing password hashing properly and using bcrypt, scrypt or PBKDF2, how should I go about choosing an appropriate difficulty factor? i.e rounds for bcrypt, iterations for PBKDF2 and ...
18
votes
5answers
764 views

Is it possible to increase the cost of BCrypt or PBKDF2 when its already calculated and without the original password?

I just wanted to know if you can increase the cost (iterations) of those two algorithms off-line. I want to increase the cost every year of my users passwords. One solution is to recalculate them ...
2
votes
3answers
650 views

Can the salt for PBKDF2 be a hash of the user-entered password?

I want to derive a key from a password in a client application that will be used as a master key that decrypts a data key. As far as I understand the salt should be private knowledge. Would it be ...
7
votes
1answer
657 views

Would it make sense to use Bcrypt and PBKDF2 together?

I've read various opinions about whether Bcrypt or PDBKF2 is a better key derivation hashing method. The answer seems to depend on a lot of complicated factors that are not easy to analyze. Would ...
35
votes
4answers
5k views

Recommended # of iterations when using PKBDF2-SHA256?

I'm curious if anyone has any advice or points of reference when it comes to determining how many iterations is 'good enough' when using PBKDF2 (specifically with SHA-256). Certainly, 'good enough' is ...