PHK's MD5 might not be slow enough anymore

Chris Palmer chris at noncombatant.org
Thu Jan 28 19:39:34 UTC 2010


Bill Moran writes:

> I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't do this
> without establishing this as an entirely new algorithm.  The hashes
> generated after your patch will not be compatible with existing password
> files, thus anyone who applies this will be unable to log in.  Have you
> tried it?

Yes, which is why I reset my passwords after doing "make install", which
worked fine. I suppose I should have mentioned that in the first message. :)

People installing the OS fresh won't need to take this step.

Note that 1,000 is simply too low -- the security value of PHK's scheme is
lost as computers increase in speed. Therefore, taking a minute to update my
passwords is acceptable to me. Since there is 0 cost for people installing
fresh, there is no reason not to do it.

The blowfish algorithm should also be similarly tuned.



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