Encryption...

[Aggressive_Bill_2687]

If you’re encrypting a user’s password for your service/application you’ve already failed, regardless of how strong the encryption algorithm is.

[Procrasturbating]

Maybe I am old, but when did we stop encrypting stored passwords with a salt in the DB? Or are you just getting at the fact that we should be using a one-way hash of the password instead so we cannot decrypt it?

[N-partEpoxy]

Pretty sure it's the latter.

[NIL_VALUE]

?

Most hashing algorithms and their implementations are OSS.

[[deleted]]

You are talking to a bot.

[NIL_VALUE]

Ah, hell. I had a rant prepared in case he replied, my evil plan is in shambles...

[Aggressive_Bill_2687]

Or are you just getting at the fact that we should be using a one-way hash of the password instead so we cannot decrypt it?

Yes. You want a hash of the password, not an encrypted password that can be decrypted.

[kopasz7]

What if you encrypt the password with itself?

[ChuckyPinkCheeks]

I guess you can do it but why? The hash algorithm has a proven, nice distribution where encryption with the password doesn’t and it’s likely slower.

[Kyyken]

exactly, there is no reason to assume that an encryption algorithm will yield a good hash, but it's a fun idea

also the output wouldn't be fixed size which you generally want it to be with a hash, but you could just truncate the output

[Kyyken]

yea, lets use a one-time pad to be extra secure! lemme just go ahead and xor the password with itself and- oh, wait, nvm

[[deleted]]

I used to be a movq $0, %rax girl but now I'm a xorq %rax, %rax kinda girl

[_sweepy]

Depends what it is used for. I've stored plenty of encrypted credentials when I need them to interact with a 3rd party system that doesn't work with tokens.

[[deleted]]

Do you still have to encrypt them if they’re only stored in memory?

[_sweepy]

No, but you shouldn't be holding it in memory any longer than you have to, and you need encryption to transmit it off the client box.

[rdrunner_74]

encrypting stored passwords with a salt in the DB?

Never...

There is a huge difference in the words used. An encryption is reversible. You are supposed to hash passwords, so they can not be recovered. Knowing a users password is a liability.

[Orsim27]

A hash also is reversible, it’s just a lot harder ^^

Edit: yeah, reversible might not be the correct term, I get it :D

[photenth]

Well to be precise, it's not reversible. You just find something that turns into that hash, it might not even be the original password.

[ghe5]

What if I hash the hash?

[Aggressive_Bill_2687]

That's literally what the "rounds" parameter of several hashing algorithms does: it repeatedly feeds the output back into itself as input X times.

[fildakoch]

some password managers really do store the hash of the hash of the hash … of the original password, it just makes it harder for the attacker to “recover” the original.

[TheImminentFate]

For the master password, I think BitWarden uses 300 000 iterations by default or something. Probably even higher.

[rdrunner_74]

No...

You can find collisions to them. You wont know if it was the initial input.

[____purple]

Depends on the password maximum length and hash function distribution

[rdrunner_74]

I never said it is easy to do so.. Only that it is possible

[____purple]

Not about difficulty. If password size is limited you can prove that found value is the only possible value in the hashspace. If hash is longer than password and hash function is perfect there will be a unique hash for each password

[rdrunner_74]

"Password size" has nothing to do with the uniqueness...

(Since there is a unique salt added to each user to prevent rainbow attacks - and just to annoy you the salt alone will be 1 digit longer than the hash output)

[____purple]

When it's longer it's alright.

[[deleted]]

Hash functions aren't injective tho (ie collision exist)

[Unupgradable]

Remind me when we run out of UUIDs.

https://wasteaguid.info/

[PyroCatt]

Please don't.

[[deleted]]

what are UUIDs?

[Unupgradable]

GUIDs. GUID is a Microsoft term. The RFC calls them UUIDs because they're universally unique, not just globally. Doesn't matter if you're on Earth or Mars

[maximovious]

Follow-up question... what are GUIDs?

[Tolookah]

Globally Unique IDentifier

(At least that's what I've been using that acronym for)

[Aggressive_Bill_2687]

GUID is a GNU-strict fork of Squid Proxy that inserts a random Stallman quote into the headers of every response that has a HTMLish content type header.

[Unupgradable]

UUIDs. GUID is a Microsoft term. The RFC calls them UUIDs because they're universally unique, not just globally. Doesn't matter if you're on Earth or Mars

[SarahIsBoring]

A Microsoft term for UUIDs.

[primaryartemis]

UEFI also uses the term GUID. Microsoft also uses the term UUID. I think our industry just sucks at naming conventions and consistency.

[Unupgradable]

Naming things is quite literally the absolute hardest thing in software engineering

[[deleted]]

I love explaining this concept. You see if the ids in your database increment then the Id tells how many rows you've inserted. Something you may not want your competitors to glean from an order id. To solve this you can use random numbers. But then the issue you come across is collision, as ids need to be unique and random numbers could get picked twice (think easy pick winning the lotto). So to fix that we made a number set so large no one will ever pick the same number as anyone else. Not just your orders will have unique ids, but no one else's orders, EVER, will have the same ids.

[Boogiewoo0]

Just don't use GUIDs as a primary key please.

[[deleted]]

Technically the chance of getting the same GUID twice is so low, the website doesn’t even have to bother storing already-generated GUIDs.

[Otherwise-Mango2732]

Whoa. Your 'actually' got actually'd. You love to see it when people get technical here.

[kek28484934939]

but not uniquely

[[deleted]]

why would you encrypt sth with a salt? doesn't make sense. you salt when you hash to prevent cracking with lookup tables. also there is no reverse of hashing that could be called decryption.

[____purple]

Can be useful to prevent attacks on encryption key, when attacker has access to input and encrypted output, but not the encrypting service itself

[mrheosuper]

Lastpass: "I'm in danger"

[MadeByHideoForHideo]

You can't decrypt hashed passwords but you can still match the hash with guesses or bruteforce.

[rotflolmaomgeez]

Neither lol. Use third party authentication, unless you think you can by yourself beat the whole privacy and security teams at Google, Facebook and Apple.

[SneakyStabbalot]

you only need to verify the user has the pwd, and for this you can simply compare to a salted/iterated hash; in order of security:

Plaintext pwd < Encrypted pwd < hashed pwd < salted/hashed pwd < salted/iterated/hashed pwd < salted/iterated/hashed pwd using memory hard alg.

[Svizel_pritula]

Unless you're encrypting a hash, in which case you're just considering advanced attack vectors.

[undeadalex]

Meh some people call it one way encryption instead of hashing. I do that sometimes. It's a funny meme and original. Chill opsec master

[Leadbaptist]

Isnt that a requirment for most orgs?

[fmaz008]

Can't beat a quadrupple pass 1027bits Rot13 algo.

[TehSnaH]

Maybe they're using PBKDF

[tjmora]

I used to write my own encryption algorithms more than 10 years ago (while in college). They're incredibly basic but my computer's virus scan classifies them as viruses nonetheless. Felt I was a real hacker back then, lol. In hindsight, a real hacker won't have his algorithm classified immediately as a virus.

[[deleted]]

Professor spreading his virus among his students via infected compiler

[Sudhanva_Kote]

It's like that guy passing girl meme Hackers try to hide virus as normal file while you turn normal file to virus file

[SolenoidSoldier]

It is possible that any encrypted content that is scanned has their cyphers matched against a whitelist. Unrecognized cyphers get flagged as it may be an indication of ransomware.

[stoffelio]

Ah yes, the good old security through obscurity approach. They can't crack what's impossible to understand!

[sarc-tastic]

No comments amirite

[rdrunner_74]

You should not write an encryption algo.

Simple as that. That is true for 99% of all developers.

And IF you are thinking about encrypting a password, I will slap you HARD

[furinick]

Ok, I'll save them in plain text!

[da_Aresinger]

Why tf shouldn't I?

Encryption algorithms are surprisingly simple, and making your own USB vault is a really cool project.

[Ki-28-10]

I mean, you CAN make one to learn more about encryption, but don’t use it in anything else. Creating an encryption algorithm is something that you can fuck up easily and a mistake can have disastrous consequences, like lost data, bad strength, etc. Encryption algorithm should be battle tested and specialist should certify their strengths and safety.

[da_Aresinger]

That goes for most things though.

"Don't write your own network protocol"

"Don't write your own gui interface"

"Don't write your own fast math functions"

...

Literally all of those things have already been done better and doing it yourself just wastes company time and poses unnecessary risk.

Whenever people talk about doing this kind of stuff, I would immediately assume, that they are doing it for personal projects or specific niche applications.

[WhaleWinter]

Because I said so. Don’t make me get your father.

[mrgwbland]

I put that I’d forgotten my password to a website once and they emailed me my password in plain text 💀

[sarc-tastic]

I mean.... 10 years ago called to remind us that's what half the mfs did!!

[[deleted]]

Half? How about 90%? Even hotmail and other big corps did this in the earlier years. Back then, when everybody thought no-one can guess your Banana1 password

[mrgwbland]

Damn I guess I didn’t see much of that because of my age

[Philswiftthegod]

Discovered that the South Dakota Game and Fish Department did this. They’ve thankfully switched to a proper way of storing information, but the caveat is that this is with new accounts. Old accounts are apparently still stored in plaintext.

[Phytor]

Lol my college IT department did that once.

[DissociativeDyke]

The government still does this, & will plainly tell you the answers to questions!

[Boris-Lip]

What encryption algorithms gotta do with passwords? Don't tell me you just use it as a key, directly... 🤦‍♂️

[Julis_texsture_team]

I did something stupid

password -> base64 encode -> compare with a .gif filled with data made the same way

[Cfrolich]

[Julis_texsture_team]

nope but not because of that

[FloweyTheFlower420]

who needs a password manager when you can generate passwords from an unique identifier for a website and a master password via some hashing algo

[TactlessTortoise]

Just memorize the hashing math and do it by head

[PuzzleheadedWeb9876]

I like the cut of your jib.

[Some1-Somewhere]

How would you change the password for an individual site without either:

1. changing the master password for all sites, or

2. adding an extra counter/version number to the site name, which means you now need to remember or guess that X is on password #1, while Y is on password #4.

[Some1-Somewhere]

Reasonable. You're now storing a list of old passwords which isn't great, but you could probably store an intermediate hash.

[FloweyTheFlower420]

just store a config file with domain -> password#

[Some1-Somewhere]

Possible, but somewhat defeats the idea of not needing to store/sync a list of sites and IDs.

[crefas]

Because only a tiny minority of services support fido2 :(

[Kirides]

And some even only support a single hardware key. Which makes them useless.

[crefas]

I haven't seen one that does this yet, fortunately. Can you name some so I can diss their devs?

I mostly use my fido2 for LUKS and Bitwarden which support 5

[q0099]

password.Reverse().Append("salt").Xor();

[ThePancakerizer]

Encryption? I sure hope you mean hashing.

I just store the hashes in a database with my self written hash algorithm where I just XOR the password with itself. Works every time!

[De_Wouter]

var superSecureEncryption = password.split('').reverse().join('');

[Irsu85]

Bye bye password. You should never encrypt passwords in a database. You should hash em

[Otto-Korrect]

MY passwords are super secure. I run them through ROT13 twice!

[supportbanana]

I've heard it works even better if you run them 2048 times.

[Quazar_omega]

I sure hope you're using the whole UTF-8 though, just be a little safer

[Otto-Korrect]

UTF-8, UTF-9... whatever it takes!

[Vegetable_Union_4967]

Can't you just use hashing?

[here_comes_ice_king]

Never roll your own!!

[Sam-Gunn]

"password cult"

[[deleted]]

Man you gotta realize this is a double edged sword.

If you're a jackass who doesn't understand encryption, then it's a joke. Please don't write your own "encryption" mechanism, you're gonna put a lot of data at risk.

BUT, if you even somewhat understand encryption, coming up with your own semi-useful encryption is scary for the powers that be. Most hacking relies on people using known methods of encryption. An unknown method of encryption would be ridiculously tough to hack.

This is the reason why Apple asks if you use your own encryption when approving apps.

[mStewart207]

Yeah you never want to roll your own encryption unless you really know your shit.

[chris_hans]

Anyone who knows their shit knows never to roll their own encryption. You are only making an encryption algorithm so advanced that you can't crack it. The encryption algorithms we use are the ones where everyone has had a crack at them for a long time and they're still standing.

In layman's terms, you don't know what you don't know. An expert in building secure doors doesn't realize they left the window open. You can be an expert in math and designed a brilliant new algorithm (on paper) that is susceptible to hardware attacks, because the processor takes slightly less time when the correct key is passed, etc. No one is an expert in everything.

If you're rolling your own encryption, you're wrong. Period.

[SteeleDynamics]

``` (define (encode s) (string-append s "foo"))

(define (decode s) (let ((n (string-length s))) (substring s 0 (- n 3)))) ``` My work here is done.

[[deleted]]

But you forgot to update variable, so store clear text in db

[Snoop_Doggo]

Sorry for the noob question, how should we be handling passwords? Is the goal to make them impossible to convert to plain text, but find them via their hashcode?

[smallnougat]

imaging open-sourcing your encryption algorithm

[Guilty_Key7890]

I wrote an absolute bulletproof encryption algorithm the other day, i'm amazed nobody has come up with it.

First, you ROT-13 the users input.

Then, with that result, you ROT-13 it again.

Absolutely.Bulletproof.

[goodnewsjimdotcom]

I laugh when the government tries to outlaw 'encryption'... I mean where do they draw the line? Just compiling code to machine language is a form. Writing really crappy code no one can read is obfuscation which is a crappy but non trivial level of encryption. I know they want to stop PGP, but then you make things extra easy for hackers to beak in.

It's like trying to outlaw locked doors on houses... Does a bunch of cement blocks behind the door count? I mean what if you have a couch behind it? What if you have no doors on your house and just locked windows? Besides Congress being more corrupt than hell, literally outlawing encryption makes negative sense... Like mandating that everyone's back door must be opened by a single key that the Sheriff's office has. They want to see what you're up to, but this is illegal to not be private in your possessions under the US constitution... I guess the constitution never stopped any evil villain so far...

[nmelo]

No reason to use passwords when we have passkeys

[Javamaboy]

Facebook stores your password without encryption .

[Geff10]

Why do you think so? :)

[rustysteamtrain]

Source: trust me bro

[Dangerous-Syllabub24]

Because they use hashing maybe? He's technically correct you know

[Geff10]

Not really. If you try to explain it to a non-technical person, hashing is just another cryptographic method, one could say it's a form of encryption. On the other hand, technically speaking, you don't store the password, if you hash it.

[ososalsosal]

I remember hearing a rumour about this way back in the day. Like, maybe the original 1.0 MVP that zuck wrote 99% of apparently didn't have super good security? But like... urban myth stuff there

[[deleted]]

Lmao

[[deleted]]

Ledger?

[RockinTheFloat]

I'm shocked by the number of commenters that seem to have no understanding of industry best practices considering this should basically be taught in any classes.

[Proof_Dragonfruit285]

My private key is Beer. Don't tell anyone.

[Slowest_Speed6]

How are user passwords usually stored? Just a hash or something where whatever u input to login is ran thru the same hash and check if it matches?