bcrypt on Rietta Cybersecurity

Bad Password Practices are Responsible For Most Data Breaches. You Can do Better.

Tue, 10 May 2016 11:07:58 -0400

The 2016 Verizon DBIR report is out and is available for download. Among the findings is the prevalence of data breaches that are attributable to stolen authorization credentials.

According to the report “63% of confirmed data breaches involved weak, default or stolen passwords” (page 20). This is an increase from 2015, when the stat was that 51% of web application breaches were attributable to stolen credentials. If anything is clear, it’s that the lowly credential theft is a clear and present danger in information security. It is responsible for more incidents than all the other exotic, technically interesting attacks combined.

What is the difference between bcrypt and SHA256?

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 10:23:27 -0500

TL;DR; SHA1, SHA256, and SHA512 are all fast hashes and are bad for passwords. SCRYPT and BCRYPT are both a slow hash and are good for passwords. Always use slow hashes, never fast hashes.

SANS’ Securing Web Application Technologies [SWAT] Checklist is offering a bit of bad security advice for the everyday web application developer, under the heading “Store User Passwords Using A Strong, Iterative, Salted Hash”:

User passwords must be stored using secure hashing techniques with a strong algorithm like SHA-256. Simply hashing the password a single time does not sufficiently protect the password. Use iterative hashing with a random salt to make the hash strong.