phc-discussions - Re: [PHC] Terminology goals

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Message-Id: <95249DA8-00C2-414D-B173-BA153C5559DB@goldmark.org>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 15:41:59 -0500
From: Jeffrey Goldberg <jeffrey@...dmark.org>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] Terminology goals

On 2013-08-20, at 3:14 PM, Marsh Ray <maray@...rosoft.com> wrote:

> Since an authentication scheme for password-based credentials has a subtly different set of security properties than general hashing, message digesting, MACing, and even key derivation, we should strongly consider giving it a different name.

Please! I'm tired of putting scare-quotes around "hash" every time I write about this. One of our goals is to make things easier services to do things properly. I still remember the people complaining that BLAKE2 was bad because it was too fast. Separate terms will help make it clear that different things have different design goals.

> The values derived from the generate function. For example, we could call it a “pash function” or “pash values”, which you could think of as “Password Authentication ScHeme” or just “Password Hash”.

Nice. I think I might start using that terminology right away. I don't think we need to wait for contest results to start doing this.

(I'd also like something for KDFs that are designed to have a work factor for when the function output isn't for authentication.  "k-desh" for "Key Derivation ScHeme"? But as this the the PHC project and not the KDF-C project, my additional wishes here are off-topic.)

Cheers,

-j