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MY'STORY

The MOVE Fire

This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985 Philadelphia police fired thousands of rounds at the MOVE house, city officials approved dropping an explosive device on the roof, the resulting fire was allowed to burn, 11 people—including five children—died, and 61 homes were destroyed. Philadelphia City Council later called it a “brutal attack carried out by the City of Philadelphia on its own citizens” and acknowledged that no individual faced criminal consequences for the bombing. One timeline correction worth preserving for the BHP record: the major previous MOVE-police confrontation was August 8, 1978, about seven years before the bombing, not a year or two earlier. Officer James Ramp was killed, other police and firefighters were wounded, nine MOVE members were later convicted, and television cameras recorded police beating Delbert Africa during his arrest. The 1985 MOVE Commission later specifically criticized city planners for failing to adequately use lessons from that 1978 confrontation. And that actually strengthens the point you’re making: 1985 did not happen without precedent or institutional memory. There had already been a deadly confrontation with MOVE, years of conflict, negotiations and police involvement before Osage Avenue.

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BLACK FACTS
The Truths They Never Taught You...

The Violence That Helped Spark the NAACP

In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.

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Wikipedia

PBKDF2

In cryptography, PBKDF1 and PBKDF2 (Password-Based Key Derivation Function 1 and 2) are key derivation functions with a sliding computational cost, used to reduce vulnerability to brute-force attacks.[1]

PBKDF2 is part of RSA Laboratories' Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) series, specifically PKCS #5 v2.0, also published as Internet Engineering Task Force's RFC 2898. It supersedes PBKDF1, which could only produce derived keys up to 160 bits long.[2]: §5.2  RFC 8018 (PKCS #5 v2.1), published in 2017, recommends PBKDF2 for password hashing.[3]

Purpose and operation

[edit]

PBKDF2 applies a pseudorandom function, such as hash-based message authentication code (HMAC), to the input password or passphrase along with a salt value and repeats the process many times to produce a derived key, which can then be used as a cryptographic key in subsequent operations. The added computational work makes password cracking much more difficult, and is known as key stretching.

While the recommended minimum number of iterations was 1,000 when the standard was written in the year 2000, the parameter is intended to be increased over time as CPU speeds increase. A Kerberos standard in 2005 recommended 4,096 iterations;[1] Apple reportedly used 2,000 for iOS 3, and 10,000 for iOS 4;[4] while LastPass in 2011 used 5,000 iterations for JavaScript clients and 100,000 iterations for server-side hashing.[5] In 2023, OWASP recommended to use 600,000 iterations for PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 and 220,000 for PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA512.[6]

Algorithmic representation of the iterative process of PBKDF2.

Having a salt added to the password reduces the ability to use precomputed hashes (rainbow tables) for attacks, and means that multiple passwords have to be tested individually, not all at once. The public key cryptography standard recommends a salt length of at least 64 bits.[3]: §4  The US National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends a salt length of at least 128 bits.[7]

Key derivation process

[edit]

PBKDF2 has five input parameters:[3]: §5.2 

DK = PBKDF2(PRF, Password, Salt, c, dkLen)

where:

  • PRF is the underlying pseudorandom function PRF taking two parameters with output length hLen (e.g., a keyed HMAC)
  • Password is the master password from which a derived key is generated
  • Salt is a sequence of bits, known as a cryptographic salt
  • c is the number of iterations desired
  • dkLen is the desired bit-length of the derived key
  • DK is the generated derived key

Each hLen-bit block Ti of derived key DK, is computed as follows (with + marking string concatenation):

DK = T1 + T2 + ⋯ + TdkLen/hLen
Ti = F(Password, Salt, c, i)

The function F is the xor (^) of c iterations of chained PRFs. The first iteration of PRF uses Password as the PRF key and Salt concatenated with i encoded as a big-endian 32-bit integer as the input. (Note that i is a 1-based index.) Subsequent iterations of PRF use Password as the PRF key and the output of the previous PRF computation as the input:

F(Password, Salt, c, i) = U1 ^ U2 ^ ⋯ ^ Uc

where:

U1 = PRF(Password, Salt + INT_32_BE(i))
U2 = PRF(Password, U1)
⋮
Uc = PRF(Password, Uc-1)

For example, WPA2 uses:

DK = PBKDF2(HMAC-SHA1, passphrase, ssid, 4096, 256)

PBKDF1 had a simpler process: the initial U (called T in this version) is created by PRF(Password + Salt), and the following ones are simply PRF(Uprevious). The key is extracted as the first dkLen bits of the final hash, which is why there is a size limit.[2]

HMAC collisions

[edit]

PBKDF2 has an interesting property when using HMAC as its pseudo-random function. It is possible to trivially construct any number of different password pairs with collisions within each pair.[8] If a supplied password is longer than the block size of the underlying HMAC hash function, the password is first pre-hashed into a digest, and that digest is instead used as the password. For example, the following password is too long:

  • Password: plnlrtfpijpuhqylxbgqiiyipieyxvfsavzgxbbcfusqkozwpngsyejqlmjsytrmd

therefore, when using HMAC-SHA1, it is pre-hashed using SHA-1 into:

  • SHA1 (hex): 65426b585154667542717027635463617226672a

Which can be represented in ASCII as:

  • SHA1 (ASCII): eBkXQTfuBqp'cTcar&g*

This means regardless of the salt or iterations, PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA1 will generate the same key bytes for the passwords:

  • "plnlrtfpijpuhqylxbgqiiyipieyxvfsavzgxbbcfusqkozwpngsyejqlmjsytrmd"
  • "eBkXQTfuBqp'cTcar&g*"

For example, using:

  • PRF: HMAC-SHA1
  • Salt: A009C1A485912C6AE630D3E744240B04
  • Iterations: 1,000
  • Derived key length: 16 bytes

The following two function calls:

PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA1("plnlrtfpijpuhqylxbgqiiyipieyxvfsavzgxbbcfusqkozwpngsyejqlmjsytrmd", ...)
PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA1("eBkXQTfuBqp'cTcar&g*", ...)

will generate the same derived key bytes (17EB4014C8C461C300E9B61518B9A18B). These derived key collisions do not represent a security vulnerability – as one still must know the original password in order to generate the hash of the password.[9]

Alternatives to PBKDF2

[edit]

One weakness of PBKDF2 is that while its number of iterations can be adjusted to make it take an arbitrarily large amount of computing time, it can be implemented with a small circuit and very little RAM, which makes brute-force attacks using application-specific integrated circuits or graphics processing units relatively cheap.[10] The bcrypt password hashing function requires a larger amount of RAM (but still not tunable separately, i.e. fixed for a given amount of CPU time) and is significantly stronger against such attacks,[11] while the more modern scrypt key derivation function can use arbitrarily large amounts of memory and is therefore more resistant to ASIC and GPU attacks.[10]

In 2013, the Password Hashing Competition (PHC) was held to develop a more resistant approach. On 20 July 2015 Argon2 was selected as the final PHC winner, with special recognition given to four other password hashing schemes: Catena, Lyra2, yescrypt and Makwa.[12] Another alternative is Balloon hashing, which is recommended in NIST password guidelines.[13]

To limit a brute-force attack, it is possible to make each password attempt require an online interaction, without harming the confidentiality of the password. This can be done using an oblivious pseudorandom function to perform password hardening.[14] This can be done as alternative to, or as an additional step in, a PBKDF.

See also

[edit]
[edit]
  • "PKCS #5 v2.1" (PDF). RSA Laboratories. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 11, 2017.
  • RFC 2898 – "PKCS #5: Password-Based Cryptography Specification Version 2.0,"[2] Obsolete.
  • RFC 6070 – "PKCS #5: Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2 (PBKDF2) Test Vectors,"[15] Informational.
  • NIST Special Publication 800-132 Recommendation for Password-Based Key Derivation

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b K. Raeburn (February 2005). Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Encryption for Kerberos 5. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC3962. RFC 3962. Proposed Standard. Updated by RFC 9141.
  2. ^ a b c Kaliski, Burt (September 2000). PKCS #5: Password-Based Cryptography Specification Version 2.0. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC2898. RFC 2898. Obsolete. Obsoleted by RFC 8018.
  3. ^ a b c Kaliski, Burt; A. Rusch (January 2017). K. Moriarty (ed.). PKCS #5: Password-Based Cryptography Specification Version 2.1. Internet Engineering Task Force. doi:10.17487/RFC8018. ISSN 2070-1721. RFC 8018. Informational. Obsoletes RFC 2898. Updated by RFC 9579.
  4. ^ "Smartphone Forensics: Cracking BlackBerry Backup Passwords". Advanced Password Cracking – Insight. ElcomSoft. September 30, 2010. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
  5. ^ "LastPass Security Notification". The LastPass Blog. May 5, 2011. Retrieved January 31, 2023.
  6. ^ "Password Storage Cheat Sheet". OWASP Cheat Sheet Series. August 15, 2021. Archived from the original on January 23, 2023. Retrieved January 23, 2023.
  7. ^ Sönmez Turan, Meltem; Barker, Elaine; Burr, William; Chen, Lily. "Recommendation for Password-Based Key Derivation Part 1: Storage Applications" (PDF). NIST. SP 800-132. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  8. ^ Bynens, Mathias. "PBKDF2+HMAC hash collisions explained". mathiasbynens.be.
  9. ^ "Collision resistance - Why is HMAC-SHA1 still considered secure?". crypto.stackexchange.com.
  10. ^ a b Colin Percival. scrypt. As presented in "Stronger Key Derivation via Sequential Memory-Hard Functions". presented at BSDCan'09, May 2009.
  11. ^ "New 25 GPU Monster Devours Passwords In Seconds". The Security Ledger. December 4, 2012. Retrieved September 7, 2013.
  12. ^ "Password Hashing Competition"
  13. ^ "Digital Identity Guidelines Authentication and Lifecycle Management Section 5.1.1.2" (PDF). NIST. SP 800-63B. Retrieved June 18, 2021.
  14. ^ Ford, W.; Kaliski, B. S. (2000). "Server-assisted generation of a strong secret from a password". Proceedings IEEE 9th International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WET ICE 2000). pp. 176–180. doi:10.1109/ENABL.2000.883724. ISBN 0-7695-0798-0. S2CID 1977743.
  15. ^ Josefsson, Simon (January 2011). PKCS #5: Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2 (PBKDF2) Test Vectors. Internet Engineering Task Force. doi:10.17487/RFC6070. ISSN 2070-1721. RFC 6070. Informational.

Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.

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Wikipedia

PBKDF2

In cryptography, PBKDF1 and PBKDF2 (Password-Based Key Derivation Function 1 and 2) are key derivation functions with a sliding computational cost, used to reduce vulnerability to brute-force attacks. PBKDF2 is part of RSA Laboratories' Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) series, specifically PKCS #5 v2.0, also published as Internet Engineering Task Force's RFC 2898. It supersedes PBKDF1, which could only produce derived keys up to 160 bits long. RFC 8018 (PKCS #5 v2.1), published in 2017, recommends PBKDF2 for password hashing.

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Wikipedia

List of PBKDF2 implementations

List of software that implements or uses the PBKDF2 key derivation standard.

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Wikipedia

1Password

1Password is a password manager developed by the Canadian software company AgileBits Inc. It supports multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and macOS. It provides a place for users to store various passwords, software licenses, and other sensitive information in a virtual vault that is locked with a PBKDF2-guarded master password. By default, the user’s encrypted vault is hosted on 1Password’s servers for a monthly fee.

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Wikipedia

HMAC

In cryptography, an HMAC (sometimes expanded as hash-based message authentication code or keyed-hash message authentication code) is a specific type of message authentication code (MAC) involving a cryptographic hash function and a secret cryptographic key. As with any MAC, it may be used to simultaneously verify both the data integrity and authenticity of a message. An HMAC is a type of keyed hash function that can also be used in a key derivation scheme or a key stretching scheme. HMAC can provide authentication using a shared secret instead of using digital signatures with asymmetric cryptography. It trades off the need for a complex public key infrastructure by delegating the key exchange to the communicating parties, who are responsible for establishing and using a trusted channel to agree on the key prior to communication.

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TOPIC OF THE DAY

Greenwood / Black Wall Street

Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.

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TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE DAY

What prosperous Tulsa district became widely known as “Black Wall Street”?

The Greenwood District.