phc-discussions - Multithreading in Argon2

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Message-ID: <CALW8-7JpajJ29-67-0pJbJJiSrKMEO1J8S6x5ci-a_2czmz9aw@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2015 12:25:07 +0200
From: Dmitry Khovratovich <khovratovich@...il.com>
To: "discussions@...sword-hashing.net" <discussions@...sword-hashing.net>
Subject: Multithreading in Argon2

Currently Argon2 has the parameter p of the number of internal lanes. For
given p, Argon2 can handle up to p parallel threads, which are regularly
synchronized. Currently the number of threads is explicitly set equal to
the number of lanes, but it is not a strong requirement.

We can imagine that an application may want to choose the number of threads
in run-time if it feels that the password hashing process initiates too
many threads in total. Thus we suggest an extension to API (not to the
specification) that takes distinct inputs for thread number and lane number.

We however advise that during the first password hash generation the number
of threads be equal to the number of lanes as otherwise this would give the
cracker an extra advantage. After the hash is stored, the subsequent
verifications can be done with any number of threads.

It is important to require both numbers to be inputs if they differ. If we
fixed the number of lanes to some high default value, such as 8, then any
application that can not support this number of threads will immediately
give the thread-richer cracker an advantage.

We welcome the comments as well as discussion of other threading issues.
For example, is there any need for external thread handlers?

-- 
Best regards,
Dmitry Khovratovich

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