Opened 19 years ago

Closed 18 years ago

Last modified 17 years ago

#273 closed enhancement (fixed)

[patch] Password salt and other algorithms support

Reported by: dmh@… Owned by: Adrian Holovaty
Component: Core (Other) Version:
Severity: normal Keywords:
Cc: gomo@… Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: yes Needs documentation: no
Needs tests: no Patch needs improvement: no
Easy pickings: no UI/UX: no

Description

The auth_users database table uses a field called password_md5 to hold passwords. However, if found, MD5 hashes can be broken pretty quickly with Rainbow Tables.

Could you please consider using SHA-512 encryption instead, perhaps with a varchar(128) field called "password_sha512"?

All the best,

Dave Hodder

Attachments (3)

auth.py.diff (2.8 KB ) - added by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com> 19 years ago.
Patch for trunk/django/models/auth.py
auth.py.2.diff (3.4 KB ) - added by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com> 19 years ago.
Patch for trunk/django/models.auth.py (fixes createsuperuser)
auth.py.3.diff (3.4 KB ) - added by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com> 19 years ago.
Patch for trunk/django/models.auth.py (fixes createsuperuser, and removes whitespace error in 2nd patch)

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (27)

comment:1 by Adrian Holovaty, 19 years ago

milestone: Version 1.0

comment:2 by Jacob, 19 years ago

I'd never heard of "Rainbow Tables" before, but a Google search turns up Project RainbowCrack which claims to be able to break "passwords up to 14 characters" in a few minutes. However, if you look more closely, you can see that this "few minutes" claim is based on pre-computed hash tables that are 64 GB in size and "will take several years [to] compute these tables on single computer." There's a big difference between what cryptographers refer to as "broken" and the real world!

comment:3 by hugo <gb@…>, 19 years ago

Jacob: have a look at passcracking.com. They have a distributed rainbow table calculator for MD5 hashes that cracks passwords with up to 8 parts in less than two hours. And it's not a scientists paper, it's a real implementation. Yep, security of simple hash-stored passwords are gone. At least use a salted hash as storage, as that will make the password internally longer and so make the hashcracking with rainbow tables more complicated due to larger setup time.

if your password is 'dummy' you just add a 8 characters random string to the front. Then build the MD5 hash (or SHA-256 or SHA-512 hash - as both MD5 and SHA-1 have known algorithmic problems) on that one and store $1$<randompart>$<hash as base64> in the database. That way the hash is depended on len(password)+len(randompart) chars and additionally the same password won't be stored as the same hash, as the random part should be what it is named: random.

That's actually what linux does with MD5 passwords - the $1$ magic is to tell the system that it's MD5. You can later upgrade to better algorithms by using $2$ etc.

comment:4 by hugo <gb@…>, 19 years ago

If you can stand a bit of Perl, here is the source of the algorithm used for linux passwords. Look for the unix_md5_crypt sub, it gives the algorithm.

comment:5 by hugo <gb@…>, 19 years ago

This file claims to be a rewrite of the perl algorithm (or the original C algorihtm below that?) in Python and it looks identical to the perl one (and is more readable). Just remember that the salt should be some random string when you first store the password, later on you just pass in the full crypted password as salt, the function takes care of the rest.

import md5crypt

salt = 'random string of 8 chars'

crypted_password = md5crypt.md5crypt('Password', salt)

# store crypted_password in the db and later on do

if crypted_password == md5crypt.md5crypt('Password entered', crypted_password):
   # let her in

comment:6 by gomo@…, 19 years ago

Does Django use salt for it's passwords? I think this must be a default for 1.0, it's really easy to implement and improves security considerably.

comment:7 by anonymous, 19 years ago

milestone: Version 1.0
priority: normalhigh
Type: defectenhancement

comment:8 by anonymous, 19 years ago

milestone: Version 1.0
priority: highnormal

If you're going to change things like that, provide a name, don't do it anonymously

comment:9 by Boffbowsh, 19 years ago

...and I need to follow my own advice

comment:10 by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com>, 19 years ago

Cc: gomo@… added
Summary: Perhaps SHA-512 hashes for passwords?Password salt and other algorithms support

Well, here's what I pulled up.
I made two new drop-in replacements for the current check_password() and set_password() in django/models/core.py
A "new-style" hash looks like "<algo>$<salt>$<hash>". The implementation is pretty straightforward. I also added an updating block, which will update the old-style hash to the new one when check_password_new() returns true (thus, when we have the password available).

This code allows for newer algorithms to be added as needed with no difficulties, by simply modifying the set_password function and adding a new check to check_password.

>       def set_password(self, raw_password):
>               import sha, random
>               algo = 'sha1'
>               salt = sha.new(random.random()).hexdigest()[:5]
>               hash = sha.new(salt+raw_password).hexdigest()
>               self.password_md5 = '%s$%s$%s' % (algo, salt, hash)
>
>       def check_password(self, raw_password):
>               "Returns a boolean of whether the raw_password was correct,
>                while considering other encryption formats, and salt. A typical
>                password hash looks like <algo>$<salt>$<hash>"
>                if self.password_md5.find('$') != -1: # backward compatibility check
>                       # assume md5, hexdigests are only [0-9a-z]
>                       # We will convert the password to the new format if raw_password matches
>                       import md5
>
>                       result = (self.password_md5 == md5.new(raw_password).hexdigest())
>                       if result:
>                               self.set_password(raw_password)
>
>                       return result
>
>               else: # regular password check
>                       (algo, salt, hash) = p.split('$')
>                       if algo == 'md5':
>                               import md5
>                               return self.password_md5 == md5.new(salt+raw_password).hexdigest()
>                       elif algo == 'sha1':
>                               import sha
>                               return self.password_md5 == sha.new(salt+raw_password).hexdigest()

Let me know what you think about this.

comment:11 by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com>, 19 years ago

Oops, replace the "p.split()" line above by "self.password_md5.split(". And (in yet another backwards compatibility breakage), password_md5 should be changed to password_hash or maybe just "password".

comment:12 by anonymous, 19 years ago

And finally, it should read "if self.password_md5.find('$') == -1". I hope that's the last horrific bug in it. How do i get an account so I can edit my older posts?

by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com>, 19 years ago

Attachment: auth.py.diff added

Patch for trunk/django/models/auth.py

comment:13 by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com>, 19 years ago

milestone: Version 1.0

Ok, here's the working and tested patch.
I wanted to keep backwards compatibility, but since passwords were stored in a varchar(32), the new-style hashes wouldn't fit. I also changed "password_md5" to "password". I left the hash upgrader out, because of the need to replace the columns anyway would make it useless.
The code I pasted before was horrid, don't look at it too much, I had a severe lack of sleep.
Sorry about the whitespace changes, I am used to tabs instead of spaces in my python files.

by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com>, 19 years ago

Attachment: auth.py.2.diff added

Patch for trunk/django/models.auth.py (fixes createsuperuser)

by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com>, 19 years ago

Attachment: auth.py.3.diff added

Patch for trunk/django/models.auth.py (fixes createsuperuser, and removes whitespace error in 2nd patch)

comment:14 by anonymous, 19 years ago

Summary: Password salt and other algorithms support[patch] Password salt and other algorithms support

comment:15 by BleSS, 19 years ago

Alternatives hash functions:

Tiger: hash value is 192 bits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_%28hash%29

Whirlpool: hash value is 512 bits.
Whirlpool hash algorithm hash has been recommended by the NESSIE project. It has also been adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as part of the joint ISO/IEC 10118-3 international standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHIRLPOOL

There is a free (under GNU Lesser GPL) library which provides a uniform interface to a large number of hash algorithms. And there is a python interface to mhash.
http://mhash.sourceforge.net/

comment:16 by hugo <gb@…>, 19 years ago

I don't think django should require any c-based libary for additional hash algorithms - it should stick to what is delivered with the python standard library. That leaves us with md5 and sha1 with sha1 being still much better than md5. And if you use salted hashes, many of the problems of pure hashes go away anyway. I would opt for using salted sha1 hashes, or at least salted md5 hashes (as are used currently with most unix systems).

comment:17 by John Madson <jmadson@…>, 19 years ago

Please strongly consider SHA1 + salt.

comment:18 by Eugene Lazutkin, 19 years ago

I support Hugo's and John's opinion: SHA1 + salt.

comment:19 by GomoX <gomo AT datafull DOT com>, 19 years ago

The patch I submitted makes $ANY_ALGO_YOU_WANT + salt possible. Today this is SHA1 (mostly because of builtin-ness), but by making the algorithm name a part of the hash, you can provide multi-algorithm support and backwards compatibility can be mantained, with algorithm migration made transparent to the users, whose hashes get updated when they successfully log in. I think this (or something else that achieves the same effect) should go in before 1.0 because the User model column has to be changed in order to allow for longer hashes.

comment:20 by Adrian Holovaty, 18 years ago

Status: newassigned

comment:21 by BleSS, 18 years ago

Bruce Schneier: "Don't use SHA-1 for anything new, and start moving away from it as soon as possible."

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/nist_hash_works_2.html

comment:22 by Dave Hodder, 18 years ago

For info -- this MD5 collision generator apparantly averages 45 minutes to find a collision on a 1.6MHz P4 machine.

http://www.stachliu.com.nyud.net:8090/collisions.html

comment:23 by Adrian Holovaty, 18 years ago

Resolution: fixed
Status: assignedclosed

(In [1327]) Fixed #273 -- BACKWARDS-INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE -- Changed auth.User.password field to add support for other password encryption algorithms. Renamed password_md5 to password and changed field length from 32 to 128. See http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/BackwardsIncompatibleChanges for upgrade information

comment:24 by (none), 17 years ago

milestone: Version 1.0

Milestone Version 1.0 deleted

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