Peppering user passwords

[Fatih Erikli]

Currently a user's password stored in database in this format:

<algorithm>$<iterations>$<salt>$<hash>

The salt is a random generated string per user. Hash (Last column) is the password hashed with the stored in previous column.

Example, these are two computed passwords, stored on database, for the same password of two users.

pbkdf2_sha256$600000$fb9cUsHWK4EMZ7VWGBAcGD$2uwiVefFwanIhxLrv+/t3sKvP4X6tDKEMw/ysHD5dIc=
pbkdf2_sha256$600000$HgWHWrF2qQD9Owj4XeEkjY$rh0qzfo+/ZCzWbL9ZJa8aKhiO5xoEMfT4EtP/+A+LzI=

The password is 123456.

Imagine I am an attacker, who got the database of different django project, I want to look up the users who have chosen the password 123456.

I have the salts of users stored in database.

make_password('123456', 'fb9cUsHWK4EMZ7VWGBAcGD')
pbkdf2_sha256$600000$fb9cUsHWK4EMZ7VWGBAcGD$2uwiVefFwanIhxLrv+/t3sKvP4X6tDKEMw/ysHD5dIc=

make_password('123456', 'HgWHWrF2qQD9Owj4XeEkjY')
pbkdf2_sha256$600000$HgWHWrF2qQD9Owj4XeEkjY$rh0qzfo+/ZCzWbL9ZJa8aKhiO5xoEMfT4EtP/+A+LzI=

These are correct password combinations. I am able to lookup the users who have their passwords exposed in public.

Password 123456 is not a possible case in Django, since the password fields have a complexity validation. However, the salt is available to the attacker when a database is stolen. Salt could be used

• to hash the raw password pair in a rainbow table.
• to hash the already exposed passwords.

There is one more element needed for hashing the password, pepper, should be project specific. When a database is exposed in public, the attacker will not be able to lookup the passwords, since they don't have the secret pepper key.

I am not sure about the vulnerability enumeration, but CWE-760 seems closer. Salt is not weak, but it is known. The salt is stored next to the hashed password.

This is a case of when a database is stolen, however I think Django, by default, should do everything that could be done at the framework level to keep the user information secured.

[Fatih Erikli]

Here is an example hasher:

# yourapp.hashers.py
class PepperedPBKDF2PasswordHasher(PBKDF2PasswordHasher):
    algorithm = "pepperred_pbkdf2_sha256"

    def encode(self, password, salt, iterations=None):
        iterations = iterations or self.iterations
        hash = pbkdf2(password, salt + settings.PASSWORD_PEPPER, iterations, digest=self.digest)
        return "%s$%d$%s$%s" % (self.algorithm, iterations, salt, hash.hex())

The hash is base64 encoded on default PBKD hasher. I deleted. There is too much things going on a piece of data. It may confuse the developers at this context, lead to another security issue.

In settings:

PASSWORD_PEPPER = "4545randomstring342445"
PASSWORD_HASHERS = ["yourapp.hashers.PepperedPBKDF2PasswordHasher"]

Django updates the computed passwords when a new hashing algorithm is added. The passwords will break when a pepper is changed.