Should password salt be hashed?

A system-wide salt is pointless to mitigate attacks; it would just make passwords longer. A system-wide salt also easily allows an attacker to keep using hash tables. We should hash and salt each password created for a user.

Why is password salting used?

Salts are used to safeguard passwords in storage. Historically, only a cryptographic hash function of the password was stored on a system, but over time, additional safeguards were developed to protect against duplicate or common passwords being identifiable (as their hashes are identical).

What is the most secure password hash?

bcrypt
bcrypt is currently the defacto secure standard for password hashing. It’s derived from the Blowfish block cipher which, to generate the hash, uses look up tables which are initiated in memory.

Why are Windows passwords not salted?

Because the salt is different for each password, each needs to be cracked individually. While Windows doesn’t currently use salting, they can encrypt stored hashes if you use the ‘SYSKEY’ tool. You can also use ’rounds’, or hashing a password multiple times.

What is salt password hash?

Passwords are often described as “hashed and salted”. Salting is simply the addition of a unique, random string of characters known only to the site to each password before it is hashed, typically this “salt” is placed in front of each password.

Are NTLM hashes salted?

Because NTLM hashes aren’t salted (do read the two answers there if you’re wondering why), providing them in downloadable form means they can easily be used to compare to hashes within an AD environment just as they are.

What is hashed and salted passwords?

Hashing is a one-way function where data is mapped to a fixed-length value. Hashing is primarily used for authentication. Salting is an additional step during hashing, typically seen in association to hashed passwords, that adds an additional value to the end of the password that changes the hash value produced.