Re: Salt Storage - web.config or database?

The salt should be created for each password and not static for all  
passwords, otherwise the value of the salt in protecting against  
attacks using rainbow tables is almost useless.  Usually the salt is  
stored appended to the hash, alternatively you can store it in  
another column.

Usually your login code will look like:

select username, password_hash from usertable where userid =  
'some_user_id';
salt = substring(password_hash, 0, 2);
hashed_password = substring(password_hash, 2, 16);

if (hash(salt + userpassword) == hashed_password)
{
        login...
}
else
{
        login failed...
}

So there is no extra database traffic to speak of.  Well... there is  
the extra 2 bytes of salt, which is pretty trivial.

-dhs

Dean H. Saxe, CEH
dean@fullfrontalnerdity.com
"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak  
minds."
    --Einstein

Find out about my Hike for Discovery at www.fullfrontalnerdity.com/hfd


On Jun 1, 2006, at 10:20 AM, cynthia.peluso@us.ngrid.com wrote:

> Where is the best place to store salts?  I have developers that  
> will be using the Microsoft random number generator (ASP.NET ) to  
> generate a salt to append to the password and then hash.  They want  
> to store the salt in the web.config file and the password hashes in  
> the database.  What is  best practice for salt storage?  The  
> developer's concern is that storing the salts in the database will  
> increase traffic volume. I'm not sure if this is the case as we are  
> talking 16 bytes or so.  If stored in web.config what level of  
> protection is required?
>
> Cindy
>
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remediation task lists at every level of the application. See for
yourself.
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