Re:Weekend project: Password hasher bookmarklet for Firefox
by hirak99 on Sunday June 10, 2012 @05:09PM
(#4092218)
Thanks for the comment. Not sure if I followed the custom salt part - unless it is already implemented at the bottom of the page, where I call the salt as master password in the custom bookmarklet. Would love to know your thoughts in case you meant something else.
Either way, this is a great way to prevent brute force attacks from determining a user's password, as well as preventing a serious incident should a website store credentials in plain text, then get compromised.
Of course, in a perfect world, everyone should be using unique, random passwords for each account they have on the Internet... but this is a great way to protect people that are using relatively insecure passwords across the board.
I'd suggest allowing custom salts so that users can enter their bookmarklet on other browsers, enter their "custom salt," and be able to get additional randomness. If this were to catch on, we wouldn't want people adding the salt to cracking tools etc (although that would be a lot more work/processing power on their part).
Sorry this was long winded. Cool idea, nice implementation!