phc-discussions - Re: [PHC] How important is salting really?

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Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 11:44:27 +0100 (CET)
From: Stefan.Lucks@...-weimar.de
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] How important is salting really?

On Fri, 12 Dec 2014, epixoip wrote:

> Each password candidate has to be re-hashed with each unique salt. This
> is where your N-times slowdown comes from. Once a hash has been cracked,
> its salt is removed from the salt table

What on earth do you mean by "salt table"?

For each user, you know both salt and Hash(PW, salt), you don't know PW.

The reason for using a salt is that if you have
   X_1 = Hash(PW_1, salt_1),
   X_2 = Hash(PW_2, salt_2),
   ...,

and have to re-compute H(PW_candidate, s) for each salt_i. Which is why 
the salt_i need to be different.

If you had no salt, then
   X_1 = Hash(PW_1),
   X_2 = Hash(PW_2),
   ...,

then you could just check look up Hash(PW_candidate) in your X_i table.

Which means, the attack would get much cheaper. (Similarily, if you are 
using the same salt for several users ...)

So long

Stefan

------  I  love  the  taste  of  Cryptanalysis  in  the morning!  ------
     <http://www.uni-weimar.de/cms/medien/mediensicherheit/home.html>
--Stefan.Lucks (at) uni-weimar.de, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany--