Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2015 00:20:35 +0300
From: Alexander Cherepanov <ch3root@...nwall.com>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] Specification of a modular crypt format

On 2015-09-13 21:26, Thomas Pornin wrote:
>   -- The encoding should be deterministic: for a given set of parameters,
>   salt value and hash output, there shall be only one valid hash string.
>   Having a deterministic output makes it much easier to verify an
>   implementation against test vectors. It also helps interoperability.

I applaud this idea and I think it's worth to be retained.

> The parameters MUST appear in lexicographic order
> of their names (using ASCII codes: '-', then digits, then letters).

This requirement seems to be a bit artificial. IMHO it's better to fix 
the order of parameters in every particular function instead of globally 
for all functions.

While lexicographic order permits to catch some bogus hashes without 
knowing the function you cannot fully verify parameters in a generic way 
anyway.

> If the function expects no parameter at all, then the complete list,
> including its terminating '$' sign, is omitted.  However, any decent
> password hashing function should have at least one configurable cost
> parameter, so in practice the parameter list is always present. Note
> that the '=' sign may appear within the complete string only as part of
> a list of parameters.

It's not clear why omitting '$' is a good choice (but I'm not saying 
that it's definitely a bad choice). It makes parsing for the specific 
function easier but makes generic parsing harder (you need to search for 
'=' between the second and third '$'). E.g. one could want to 
differentiate between a "salt string" and a "hash string" without diving 
into function specifics.

Are functions without parameters worth to be covered at all?

> Consumers of salt strings and hash strings MUST validate the provided
> string, and reject invalid strings. In particular, they must verify
> that all parameters are present, in due order, with their unique valid
> encoding.

Yay!

 > B64
 > ---

 >    -- If the last group does not contain exactly three bytes, then:
 >       1. The group is completed with one or two bytes of value 0x00,
 >          then processed as above.
 >       2. The resulting sequence of characters is truncated to its
 >          two first characters (if the group initially contained a single
 >          byte) or to its first three characters (if the group initially
 >          contained two bytes).
 >
 > A B64-encoded value thus yields a string whose length, taken modulo 4,
 > can be equal to 0, 2 or 3, but not to 1.

It should probably be mentioned here that some trailing bits in the last 
(incomplete) group must be validated to be zero on decoding.

> For Argon2
> ==========
>
> For Argon2, the following is specified:
>
>    -- The identifier for Argon2d is 'argon2d'.
>
>    -- The identifier for Argon2i is 'argon2i'.
>
>    -- The parameters are:
>
>       ** m    Memory size, expressed in kilobytes, between 1 and (2^32)-1.
>               Value is an integer in decimal, over 1 to 10 digits.

Hm, there seems to be some indeterminism in Argon2 itself here? 
According to spec: "The actual number of blocks is $m'$, which is $m$ 
rounded down to the nearest multiple of $4p$."

>       ** p    Degree of parallelism, between 1 and 64.
>               Value is an integer in decimal, over 1 or 2 digits.

In Argon2 v1.2.1, p could be up to 255.

> Rationale
> =========
>
> The format is inspired from what already exists for Unix crypt() and
> /etc/shadow files. Its alphabet is limited to: [a-zA-Z0-9./$=-]; as

',' should be added to the alphabet. It's used between parameters.

-- 
Alexander Cherepanov

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