XTF Posted June 26, 2012 Share Posted June 26, 2012 As far as I know, the security of MD5 isn't the best, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5 Wouldn't it make sense to move away from MD5 and use for example SHA1? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan H. Posted June 26, 2012 Share Posted June 26, 2012 SHA1 is hardly better. bcrypt or an alternative would be optimal, but there are implementation problems that mean it probably won't be happening soon [mostly lack of support and cross-platform compatibility]. If you're interested in a lot of reading, I had a topic on security concerns a couple months ago. It touched on this, among other things. http://community.inv...board-security/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XTF Posted June 26, 2012 Author Share Posted June 26, 2012 SHA1 is hardly better. Is it? For strong long passwords it seems much better. For short passwords maybe not so much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan H. Posted June 26, 2012 Share Posted June 26, 2012 Is it? For strong long passwords it seems much better. For short passwords maybe not so much. It suffers from the same fundamental problem that MD5 does, which is that it is a hash function, not a cryptographic method. It is designed to be as fast as possible to calculate, which means that hardware can be optimized to process the hashes extremely quickly--for a modern GPU, hundreds of millions per second. If brute force attacks aren't a concern, the hashing technique is largely irrelevant anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted June 27, 2012 Share Posted June 27, 2012 There are rainbow tables for SHA1, so realistically it would suffer the same side effects (ability to look up a hash, given enough resources) as MD5. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XTF Posted June 27, 2012 Author Share Posted June 27, 2012 Don't good salts make rainbow tables useless? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 Rainbow tables take into account salts now - most have options on the order and how the hashes are computered (salt first - password second, salt first and md5'd - password second and plain text, and so forth). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XTF Posted June 28, 2012 Author Share Posted June 28, 2012 Doesn't that only work if your salts are too small? If you've got 64 bit salts it'd require you to compute 2^64 rainbow tables. AFAIK computing one table is kinda expensive already, how are you going to compute 2^64? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euantor Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 Given the power of modern machines and the fact you can use your GPU these days to handle tasks like this as well as the CPU, 2^64 really isn't that un-reachable as you might think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan H. Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 Given the power of modern machines and the fact you can use your GPU these days to handle tasks like this as well as the CPU, 2^64 really isn't that un-reachable as you might think. And since in most systems the salt is stored in plaintext with the password, it's often simpler to do away with rainbow tables and just go straight at it with a CPU/GPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euantor Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 And since in most systems the salt is stored in plaintext with the password, it's often simpler to do away with rainbow tables and just go straight at it with a CPU/GPU. Exactly. A lot of systems are using considerably outdated password storage mechanisms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XTF Posted June 29, 2012 Author Share Posted June 29, 2012 Given the power of modern machines and the fact you can use your GPU these days to handle tasks like this as well as the CPU, 2^64 really isn't that un-reachable as you might think. Got a reference for that? Note that we're talking about 2^64 rainbow tables, not 2^64 passwords. And since in most systems the salt is stored in plaintext with the password, it's often simpler to do away with rainbow tables and just go straight at it with a CPU/GPU. Storing (part of) the salt in a conf file would alleviate that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euantor Posted June 29, 2012 Share Posted June 29, 2012 Got a reference for that? Note that we're talking about 2^64 rainbow tables, not 2^64 passwords. There are plenty on why MD5 is bad:http://blog.cloudfla...ying-up-to-datehttp://codahale.com/...ore-a-password/ Then there's also sites like this:http://www.md5-hash.com/md5-hashing-decrypt/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XTF Posted June 29, 2012 Author Share Posted June 29, 2012 There are plenty on why MD5 is bad: I take it you don't get what we're talking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euantor Posted June 29, 2012 Share Posted June 29, 2012 I believe I do, though I am new to IPS and may be grasping the wrong end of the stick concerning anything relating to the actual software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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