Verifying salted hashes with Perls unpack() - perl

I'm trying to verify salted passwords with Perl and am stuck with unpack.
I've got a salted hashed password, e.g. for SHA256: SSHA256 = SHA256('password' + 'salt') + 'salt'
Base64 encoded that gets '
{SSHA256}eje4XIkY6sGakInA+loqtNzj+QUo3N7sEIsj3fNge5lzYWx0'.
I store this string in my user database. When a user logs in need to separate the salt from the hash to hash the supplied password with the salt and compare the result to the one retrieved from the db. This is where I'm stuck. I don't seem to have the right unpack template separate the hash (8-bit binary, fixed length, in this case 32 byte) from the salt (8-bit binary, variable length).
I have tried something like
my ($hash, $salt) = unpack('N32 N*', $data);
but that doesn't seem to work out.
My question is: How can I unpack this hash (after it has been Base64 decoded) to get the fixed length hash in one and the variable length salt in another variable?

I think you're needlessly re-inventing the wheel.
You could use e.g. Crypt::SaltedHash to easily verify it, for instance:
my $password_entered = $cgi->param('password');
my $valid = Crypt::SaltedHash->validate($salted, $password_entered);
A longer example, showing using Crypt::SaltedHash to generate the salted password in the first instance, too:
my $csh = Crypt::SaltedHash->new(algorithm => 'SHA-256');
$csh->add('secretpassword');
my $salted = $csh->generate;
# $salted will contain the salted hash (Crypt::SaltedHash picks random
# salt for you automatically)
# for example:
DB x $salted = $csh->generate;
0 '{SSHA256}H1WaxHcyAB81iyIPwib/cCUtjqCm2sxQNA1QvGeh/iT3m51w'
# validating that against the plaintext 'secretpassword' shows it's right:
DB x Crypt::SaltedHash->validate($salted, 'secretpassword');
0 1
# and trying it with an incorrect password:
DB x Crypt::SaltedHash->validate($salted, 'wrongpassword');
0 ''
No reason to re-invent all of this yourself.

You seem to be doing RFC2307 the hard way and also manage to introduce bugs. Those + do not mean what you think.
Subclass Authen::Passphrase::SaltedDigest instead.

Not sure the whole picture is present, but the unpack template you have specified -'N32 N*'- is for 32 unsigned long (32-bit) (big-endian) integers (see pack docs).
Looks like you may instead need unsigned chars: '32C C*'

Related

flask_bcrypt does not allow encoded (Byte) password with '\x00' in the middle

I have some code that accepts a password in string format, and hash it with SHA3-512 before passing it to flask_bcrypt for hashing. However, by some coincidence, I found a test case that produces a hash that contains '\x00' in the middle of the hash result, as seen below:
password_str = 'tes15!tes15!tes15!tes15!tes15!tes15!tes15!tes15!tes15!tes15!tes15!tes15!.'
password_bytes = password_str.encode('utf-8')
hashed = hashlib.sha3_512(password_bytes).digest()
The result of the hash is:
b'u~"\x98\xac\xc8E2eV\xbb\x8e#}\x92R\xdc\xa2\xab\xab\xcb\x8d.~\x9f\x82a\xbf\xec]k\xdb\xc55\x1d\xa4\x00\xe8\x03\x94\xb0\x91\x14\xf0\x9ec\x9a\x9ay\xfeP\xe3\x07J\x00\xb5\xbd\xba\xcb(\xf5\xdb\xab\x1a'
As we can see, there is an '\x00' found in the middle of the hash, but not at the end. flask_bcrypt detects this a ValueError exception:
if b"\x00" in password:
raise ValueError("password may not contain NUL bytes")
I understand that '\x00' is a reserved character and possible attack vector due to hash-length extension attacks. However, I do not think that I have done anything outside the ordinary. Is there a best practice that sanitizes the hash prior to passing it to bcrypt or flask_bcrypt that I am missing, or is there another type of byte-encoding that should be used with passwords?
It would be weird to reject a normal password just because it's derived hash conflicts with the auth library used.. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
BCrypt was designed to hash user passwords, this is not the same as e.g. SHA which is meant to hash binary input like a file. A user entered password actually never contains a \0 character, after all it is the user who desides about his own password, not a hacker trying to exploit a security vulnerability.
In other words, you should pass in the password as string directly, and avoid the UTF-8 encoding which converts it to a binary value.

Perl Digest Bcrypt, generating a proper hash

I have written a test program that generates a Bcrypt hash. This hash later needs to be verified by a PHP backend.
This is my perl code:
use Digest;
#use Data::Entropy::Algorithms qw(rand_bits);
#my $bcrypt = Digest->new('Bcrypt', cost=>10, salt=>rand_bits(16*8));
my $bcrypt = Digest->new('Bcrypt', cost=>10, salt=>'1111111111111111');
my $settings = $bcrypt->settings(); # save for later checks.
my $pass_hash = $bcrypt->add('bob')->b64digest;
print $settings.$pass_hash."\n";
This prints
$2a$10$KRCvKRCvKRCvKRCvKRCvKOoFxCE1d/OZTKQqhet3bKOq6ZVIACXBU
This does not validate as a proper hash if I use an online bcrypt tool such as https://bcrypt-generator.com
Can someone point out the error? Thanks.
Figured out the problem. I have to use bcrypt_b64digest instead of b64digest. I wish the perl documentation was clearer in which one needs to be used so that other bcrypt implementations can "get it".
my $pass_hash = $bcrypt->add('bob')->bcrypt_b64digest;
From https://metacpan.org/pod/Digest::Bcrypt#bcrypt_b64digest
Same as "digest", but will return the digest base64 encoded using the
alphabet that is commonly used with bcrypt. The length of the returned
string will be 31 and will only contain characters from the ranges
'0'..'9', 'A'..'Z', 'a'..'z', '+', and '.'
The base64 encoded string returned is not padded to be a multiple of 4
bytes long. Note: This is bcrypt's own non-standard base64 alphabet,
It is not compatible with the standard MIME base64 encoding.

Random string vs hashed and salted string

Say I want to create a password that is purely random, call it randPass of size 32 characters.
Is there any advantage in terms of security of using this directly as a password, vs hashing and salting it (like md5(randPass + salt)?
I mean at the end of the day, they will both be a 32 character long random characters.
Here is a dummy example:
salt = SFZYCr4Ul1zz1rhurksC67AugGIYOKs5;
randPass = VgQK1AOlXYiNwfe74RlU8e8E4szC4UXK;
Then the md5(randPass + salt) = md5(VgQK1AOlXYiNwfe74RlU8e8E4szC4UXKSFZYCr4Ul1zz1rhurksC67AugGIYOKs5) becomes
hash = dddbc2cbda808beeb7e64ce578ef4020
The main advantage of a RANDOM salt is that you cannot run a dictionary attack against the hash table since each password should have a different salt, thus "Password" and salt "jfadljfadiufosd38120809321" turns into "Passwordjfadljfadiufosd38120809321" which is definitely not in a pre-computed dictionary md5 hash dictionary so you cannot do a reverse lookup and figure out the users password.
By using a hash you are limiting the characters in the password.
Hash characters are: range(0,9) and range('a','f').
More characters is better.
If the password is to be submitted to a web page then the symbols should not include those commonly used in sql injection. (e.g. ",',%,\)
To eliminate symbols change range('!','#') to range('0','9')
Set your criteria for how many and what characters and symbols are allowed.
This algorithm uses upper case, lower case, numeric and symbols.
Length of 32 characters.
$characters = array_merge(
range('a','z'),
range('A','Z'),
range('!','#'));
shuffle($characters);
shuffle($characters);
$characters = array_flip($characters);
$ndx = 33;
$pass = '';
while($ndx-->1){
$pass .= array_rand($characters);
}
echo $pass;

Dovecot password hashing

Can anyone tell me how the Dovecot administration tool (doveadm pw) hashes passwords when using SHA-512. $6$ indicates SHA-512, followed by a salt, then the hash. How exactly does Dovecot generate the salt? Does it use an own algorithm? As far as I can see it uses /dev/random or /dev/urandom, but how does it deal with non-ASCII characters?
Nevermind, found out in password-scheme.c.
It reads data from /dev/urandom and has an array with allowed characters (static const char salt_chars[] = "./0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";).
The salt is generated by using one of the characters from that array; precisely, it takes the byte from /dev/urandom modulo the length of salt_chars - 1 and uses that as index to pick a char from salt_chars.

How should I generate a random alphanumeric initial password for new users?

We have to automatically import a large list of users with some data into a running system.
For an initial password I want to update the list (csv format at the moment) with a random alphanumeric key (8 digits).
When inserting it with a special routine (which needs a csv file), the password (in this case the alphanumeric key) is stored as a md5 hash.
i.e. I generate a random alphanumeric key:
H2A5D39A -> MD5: 1642fccf791f15d137cf31282af79752
This way I want to create a list where authenticated users can ask me for their initial password (the alphanumeric key).
Do you have a better idea for a "secret" initial password?
How would you create the alphanumeric key in Perl?
P.S.: The "running system", not programmed by us, just allowes alphanumeric passwords (no special chars,...)
How would you create the alphanumeric key in Perl?
join'', map +(0..9,'a'..'z','A'..'Z')[rand(10+26*2)], 1..8
I would probably use pwgen. It is great as it allows easy customization, and has the switch not to use ambiguous characters (think: I, l, 1, O, 0).
for example:
=> pwgen -c -n -B 8 50
shuFak9o peiCh3Oo ohPieng9 Vohh7zuu os3Theep aeV9nuo9 aexeik4B aeChoh9s
uth3eePu baePhu3o aiS3pahn iPie4itu We9zuphi xie3Chi3 yeiRoo7c fai3ITai
aCh9ohco Echuab7v Fu9ahCho Aevae4no Peethai9 AiJio3Pa aeNge9Fo baePh7Uy
Nai7shei eeMoh9en Zeibai4n eGe7yuch Jaek7nai aeZah7sh Chei4ua4 shoo9oG9
iu7Wohho aep7De4U Fong9fo3 AhneeP7U oxae7Yoh ahF4eim3 fahm9Aiw naoNg4ie
Chie4xua jix3Uvot aChei7ai diey4Shi Yur7ee4j eeJeo9ee Bou3ahmu kaeb4Cah
Eh4Eemae oD4phoo9
Anonymous's answer is very good, but, if you need a random string that conforms to some rules (such as at least one uppercase, one lowercase, and one number), you may want to look into String::Random.
Another module to consider is Data::Random
I just completed a review of the 12 modules on CPAN that can be used to generate random passwords:
http://blogs.perl.org/users/neilb/2011/08/random-password-generation.html
In short: if you want a pronounceable password, look at Crypt::YAPassGen,
otherwise go for App::Genpass.
App::Genpass avoids confusable characters and gives you better control (and defaults) than Data::Random or String::Random