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Is it worth it to hash client side passwords?
The PBKDF2 in the client will prevent dictionary attacks and the single hash operation on the server side will prevent using the hashed passwords from a stolen database as is. There are few time when client-side hashing is worthwhile.
How does hashing work on the client side?
Hashing on the client side doesn’t solve the main problem password hashing is intended to solve – what happens if an attacker gains access to the hashed passwords database.
Why is multi factor authentication better than Password Hashing?
And for people who want more security than password, multi-factor authentication is a better solution. So the second short answer is: because multi-factor authentication provides more security than client-side password hashing. To understand this problem, first you have to understand why we hash passwords.
Why do we use slow hashes instead of fast hashes?
Password hashing helps prevent anyone except the user from learning the password. People reuse passwords and they are usually not very strong if memorised. That’s why we bother with slow hashes (Bcrypt, Scrypt, Argon2, etc.) instead of a fast hash: it protects the user’s password better, even though it does not have any benefit for the application.
Which is a good case for client side hashing?
A good case for client-side hashing is the way some “password safes” work: they compute a site-specific password by hashing the user’s “master password” together with the site name. This gives most of the usability of always using the same password everywhere, while not actually giving your master password to dozens of distinct site.
What’s the point of hashing passwords for authentication?
The idea being that the hash is reproducible for authentication, yet hopefully not vulnerable to reverse-engineering attacks (to discover the literal password) other than brute force if the server data is compromised.
Where are hashed passwords stored on a server?
Since the (hashed) passwords sent by the clients are stored as-is in the database, such an attacker can impersonate all users by sending the server the hashed passwords from the database as-is.
How to do client side hashing of password using bcrypt?
Just to explain it further, I am using JCryption API for encrypting the password using AES, so the value transmitted over network is AES (SHA1 (MD5 (plain password))) now I want to replace MD5 with Bcrypt only. Rest of the things remain unchanged. Will this approach work against “Man in the middle attack” ?