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Discussion on: Handling Passwords

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devmazee2057282 profile image
dewbiez

Because, I'm just like that. And I've read elsewhere that it isn't bad to do something like that. From a valuable source regarding security.

And that's the thing, most developers don't take the extra step. I do. And you might say it brings down the performance, and yes it does. But not by much if you're doing it right. And I've run some tests, and it doesn't make that much of an impact on performance, especially since AES is pretty fast compared to some of the other encryption algorithms.

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antogarand profile image
Antony Garand

The important part of hashing passwords is for them not to be reversible.
The extra step is salting those.

Encrypting them does not provide any security benefits, other than perhaps having two secret keys in different areas (salt in database, AES secret hardcoded in code), but makes everything else harder.

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devmazee2057282 profile image
dewbiez • Edited

You're right, the password shouldn't be reversible. It's not, because it's hashed before it's encrypted. As said in the resource above, it's realistically not much securer than the hashing algorithm.

It just makes it a pain for anyone trying to steal user passwords. Meaning they have to decrypt it someway(exploiting the server and executing code to decrypt, being one way, or getting the encryption key), before they can even deal with the hashes.

I believe that a decent hashing algorithm with a salt and peppering, along with decent encryption provides the same security(if not better) over just plain decent hashing with a salt.