News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Password Cracking AES-256 DMGs and Epic Self-Pwnage. Parent comment

Re:Password Cracking AES-256 DMGs and Epic Self-Pwnage by oakenshield on Saturday February 09, 2013 @02:11AM (#5191983)
I may not understand the whole context, but if you're using PBKDF2 for key derivation, you don't want to use something that works "fast". You want whatever algorithm/iteration combination that is as slow as possible [1], but not too slow that it annoys the user.

[1] on modern hardware, that is.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Password Cracking AES-256 DMGs and Epic Self-Pwnage by moonboots on Saturday February 09, 2013 @02:28AM (#5192007)
The kdf should be as slow as possible for an attacker but fast enough for you. If you're using python and the attacker is using C, you can increase security with no usability loss by switching to C and raising the iteration count.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Password Cracking AES-256 DMGs and Epic Self-Pwnage by jgeralnik on Saturday February 09, 2013 @01:03PM (#5193279)
Using a slow implementation of PBKDF2 is not going to slow down attackers who use a fast implementation.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Password Cracking AES-256 DMGs and Epic Self-Pwnage by oakenshield on Saturday February 09, 2013 @05:14PM (#5194263)
Correct. I didn't mean slow implementation, I meant slow enough on modern hardware using the fastest implementaiton.
[ Parent | on HN ]