Password hashing

Purpose

Argon2id is a memory-hard password hashing and password-based key derivation function (KDF). It takes the following parameters:

  • A password.

  • A 128-bit random salt.

  • An iteration count.

  • A memory size in bytes.

  1. Set the iteration count to 3.

  2. Set the memory size as high as possible (minimum of 64 MiB) for a reasonable delay (e.g. 100 ms to 1 sec) on the type of device your application will run on.

  3. If the delay is lower than you would like, increase the iterations.

See the Notes for some example parameters.

Usage

DeriveKey

Fills a span with output keying material computed from a password, a random salt, an iteration count, and a memory size in bytes.

Argon2id.DeriveKey(Span<byte> outputKeyingMaterial, ReadOnlySpan<byte> password, ReadOnlySpan<byte> salt, int iterations, int memorySize)

Exceptions

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

outputKeyingMaterial has a length less than MinKeySize.

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

salt has a length not equal to SaltSize.

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

iterations is less than MinIterations.

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

memorySize is less than MinMemorySize.

InsufficientMemoryException

Insufficient memory to perform key derivation.

ComputeHash

Fills a span with an encoded password hash computed from a password, a randomly generated salt, an iteration count, and a memory size in bytes.

Argon2id.ComputeHash(Span<byte> hash, ReadOnlySpan<byte> password, int iterations, int memorySize)

hash must be a fixed length due to libsodium's API, which pads the potentially variable-length output with null characters.

You can convert the hash into a string for storage in a database using Encoding.UTF8.GetString(). Any null characters at the end can either be left alone or removed. Only this hash needs to be stored as the cost parameters and salt are encoded.

Exceptions

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

hash has a length not equal to MaxHashSize.

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

iterations is less than MinIterations.

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

memorySize is less than MinMemorySize.

InsufficientMemoryException

Insufficient memory to perform password hashing.

VerifyHash

Verifies that an encoded password hash is correct for a given password. It returns true if the hash is valid and false otherwise.

Argon2id.VerifyHash(ReadOnlySpan<byte> hash, ReadOnlySpan<byte> password)

Exceptions

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

hash has a length less than MinHashSize or greater than MaxHashSize.

FormatException

Invalid encoded password hash prefix.

NeedsRehash

Determines if an encoded password hash matches the expected iteration count and memory size. It returns true if the hash does not match and false if the hash matches.

Argon2id.NeedsRehash(ReadOnlySpan<byte> hash, int iterations, int memorySize)

Exceptions

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

hash has a length less than MinHashSize or greater than MaxHashSize.

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

iterations is less than MinIterations.

ArgumentOutOfRangeException

memorySize is less than MinMemorySize.

FormatException

Invalid encoded password hash.

Constants

These are used for validation and/or save you defining your own constants.

public const int KeySize = 32;
public const int SaltSize = 16;
public const int MinKeySize = 16;
public const int MinIterations = 1;
public const int MinMemorySize = 8192;
public const int MinHashSize = 93;
public const int MaxHashSize = 128;

Notes

The best defence against password cracking will always be to use strong passwords. For example, diceware with 6+ words.

  • Interactive scenario (e.g. online login): 50-250 ms.

  • Semi-interactive scenario (e.g. file encryption): 250-1000 ms.

  • Non-interactive (e.g. disk encryption): 1000-5000 ms.

Here are some example parameters for different scenarios:

Source
Iterations
Memory (bytes)
*Delay (ms)

libsodium's interactive

2

67108864​

51

RFC second recommended option

3

67108864​

72

libsodium's moderate

3

268435456

314

libsodium's sensitive

4

1073741824

1745

*These delays are for my desktop (a gaming PC). You should perform benchmarks on a typical device for your application using BenchmarkArgon2.NET.

More memory is better than more iterations. However, you will need to increase the iterations in most cases because there should be a limit on how much memory your application uses.

Too high of an iteration count/memory size on a server could lead to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. You can do client-side password hashing as well as server-side password hashing to help, sometimes called server relief.

The parallelism is always 1 for deriving keys/hashes in libsodium. However, hashes with a parallelism greater than 1 can be verified.

Libsodium also supports Argon2i, which is more side-channel resistant but less GPU resistant. However, Geralt only supports Argon2id because it is the mandatory and recommended variant in the RFC plus there are attacks against Argon2i.

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