phc-discussions - Re: [PHC] Re: [Cryptography] The proper way to hash password files

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Date: Mon, 26 May 2014 20:51:18 -0400
From: Peregrine <peregrinebf@...il.com>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] Re: [Cryptography] The proper way to hash password files

Of course, one can simply use an HMAC construction with any normal password
hashing function. If you have that in a dedicated hardware chip then you
may gain security, otherwise one should assume that any attack capable of
getting the hashed-password database is capable of getting any other secret
data, like private keys. Some of the submissions explicitly support keyed
password hashing, and with others any secure HMAC scheme should work. Using
a strong password hashing scheme with a key protects weak passwords, and
protects strong passwords even if the key is somehow leaked.

Even with a hardware chip one must be careful, as there might be a way for
the chip to leak the key. They're also not practical for systems using
virtualized hosting, and potentially insecure if an attacker can access the
hardware chip (such as in a server at a colocation facility.) It's safer to
assume everything that gets connected to the internet will be leaked and
design systems to keep passwords secret with that assumption.

--
Carl 'SAI' Mitchell

On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Hongjun Wu <wuhongjun@...il.com> wrote:

> I think that a general way to protect password file is to hash passwords
> (like the Password Hashing competition).
>
> But a strong way to protect passwords is to use MAC (much more secure than
> using hash if the MAC operation is done in a separate hardware chip).  I
> have talked about the advantage of using MAC to protect password web
> authentication in my first post in the PHC discussion forum.  My idea is
> similar to that of Phillip Hallam-Baker, except that I think a salt is
> still useful even when MAC is used.
>
> If MAC is used, even the weak passwords can be well protected (i.e., they
> cannot be recovered directly from the password file).
>
> Best Regards,
> hongjun
>
>
> On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 11:17 PM, Yann Droneaud <ydroneaud@...eya.com>wrote:
>
>> Le jeudi 22 mai 2014 à 13:09 -0400, Phillip Hallam-Baker a écrit :
>> > Lots of sackcloth and ashes as EBay loses a password file.
>> >
>> > It occurs to me that most of the time, machines do password files
>> > wrong. Rather than using a salted hash, a better approach would be to
>> > use a MAC with a randomly chosen key that is never disclosed.
>> >
>> > Now this seems obvious but I can't recall ever seeing code set up to
>> > do the job this way...
>>
>> The proper way to hash passwords is at https://password-hashing.net/
>>
>> (or someone was late to submit her proposal !)
>>
>> Regards.
>>
>> --
>> Yann Droneaud
>> OPTEYA
>>
>>
>>
>

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