- Wednesday, October 03, 2007
BCrypt.net - Strong Password Hashing for .NET and Mono
Using raw hash functions to authenticate passwords is as naive as using unsalted hash functions. Don’t.
Thomas PtacekBCrypt.net is an implementation of OpenBSD's Blowfish-based password hashing code, described in "A Future-Adaptable Password Scheme" by Niels Provos and David Mazières. It is a direct port of jBCrypt by Damien Miller, and is thus released under the same BSD-style license. The code is fully managed and should work with any little-endian CLI implementation -- it has been tested with Microsoft .NET and Mono.
Why BCrypt?
Most popular password storage schemes are based on fast hashing algorithms such as MD5 and SHA-1. BCrypt is a computationally expensive adaptive hashing scheme which utilizes the Blowfish block cipher. It is ideally suited for password storage, as its slow initialization time severely limits the effectiveness of brute force password cracking attempts. How much overhead it adds is configurable (that's the adaptive part), so the computational resources required to test a password candidate can grow along with advancements in hardware capabilities.
Usage
Using BCrypt in your code is very simple:
// Pass a logRounds parameter to GenerateSalt to explicitly specify the // amount of resources required to check the password. The work factor // increases exponentially, so each increment is twice as much work. If // omitted, a default of 10 is used. string hashed = BCrypt.HashPassword(password, BCrypt.GenerateSalt(12)); // Check the password. bool matches = BCrypt.CheckPassword(candidate, hashed);
The source code is available via the links below. You can download the packaged version, which includes an NUnit-based test suite, or download the source directly via
BCrypt.cs.Attachments
Comments
- Sunday, October 07, 2007 9:49:58 AM by AdiTrackback from http://dotmad.blogspot.com/2007/10/now-add-some-pepper-to-your-password.html
- Thursday, November 29, 2007 5:30:34 PM by Paul HouleThanks a million!
- Tuesday, January 27, 2009 8:14:58 AM by SvishWhy do GenerateSalt(30) take for ever, but GenerateSalt(31) seems to take no time at all?
- Tuesday, March 17, 2009 5:11:18 PM by SireNote that the salt is actually included in the hash, so there is no need to store the salt separately.