phc-discussions - Re: [PHC] Password hashing by itself is not enough

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Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 08:07:54 +0800
From: Ben Harris <mail@...rr.is>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] Password hashing by itself is not enough

On 14/03/2015 3:57 am, "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell@...il.com> wrote:
> This provides _very_ narrow security, unless you put the master key
> decryption function (and ideally, comparison) inside a HSM (hardware
> security module) which acts as a rate limiter for checking; since most
> attacks that would allow the attacker to get the database also allow
> them to get the master key.

Do you have any examples to back this up? By my reasoning, there are
relatively few attacks that would disclose both as the database is usually
on a different box, with access from different roles and backups are stored
in different areas.

Plus, most attacks large enough to disclose both parts could also just
result in the attacker sniffing the plaintext passwords from the servers
responsible for hashing it.

I'm not saying it is a silver bullet, just disagreeing that 'most' attacks
would compromise both.

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