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How to hash a password

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How is a password hashed?

Hashing turns your password (or any other piece of data) into a short string of letters and/or numbers using an encryption algorithm. If a website is hacked, cyber criminals don't get access to your password. Instead, they just get access to the encrypted “hash” created by your password.

How do hackers get hashed passwords?

Hackers carry out exfiltration of hashed passwords through leaked data. Once there's a security breach on a company's database, hacking becomes easy.

What is the best hash for passwords?

To protect passwords, experts suggest using a strong and slow hashing algorithm like Argon2 or Bcrypt, combined with salt (or even better, with salt and pepper). (Basically, avoid faster algorithms for this usage.) To verify file signatures and certificates, SHA-256 is among your best hashing algorithm choices.

Can password hashes be cracked?

Passwords are always hashed before being stored in the database, and the hash is compared during the verification process. Depending on the encryption employed, different systems store password hashes in different ways. And if you have hashes, you can easily crack any password.


Most of the other answers here are somewhat out-of-date with today's best practices. As such here is the application of using PBKDF2/Rfc2898DeriveBytes to store and verify passwords. The following code is in a stand-alone class in this post: Another example of how to store a salted password hash. The basics are really easy, so here it is broken down:

STEP 1 Create the salt value with a cryptographic PRNG:

byte[] salt;
new RNGCryptoServiceProvider().GetBytes(salt = new byte[16]);

STEP 2 Create the Rfc2898DeriveBytes and get the hash value:

var pbkdf2 = new Rfc2898DeriveBytes(password, salt, 100000);
byte[] hash = pbkdf2.GetBytes(20);

STEP 3 Combine the salt and password bytes for later use:

byte[] hashBytes = new byte[36];
Array.Copy(salt, 0, hashBytes, 0, 16);
Array.Copy(hash, 0, hashBytes, 16, 20);

STEP 4 Turn the combined salt+hash into a string for storage

string savedPasswordHash = Convert.ToBase64String(hashBytes);
DBContext.AddUser(new User { ..., Password = savedPasswordHash });

STEP 5 Verify the user-entered password against a stored password

/* Fetch the stored value */
string savedPasswordHash = DBContext.GetUser(u => u.UserName == user).Password;
/* Extract the bytes */
byte[] hashBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(savedPasswordHash);
/* Get the salt */
byte[] salt = new byte[16];
Array.Copy(hashBytes, 0, salt, 0, 16);
/* Compute the hash on the password the user entered */
var pbkdf2 = new Rfc2898DeriveBytes(password, salt, 100000);
byte[] hash = pbkdf2.GetBytes(20);
/* Compare the results */
for (int i=0; i < 20; i++)
    if (hashBytes[i+16] != hash[i])
        throw new UnauthorizedAccessException();

Note: Depending on the performance requirements of your specific application, the value 100000 can be reduced. A minimum value should be around 10000.


Based on csharptest.net's great answer, I have written a Class for this:

public static class SecurePasswordHasher
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Size of salt.
    /// </summary>
    private const int SaltSize = 16;

    /// <summary>
    /// Size of hash.
    /// </summary>
    private const int HashSize = 20;

    /// <summary>
    /// Creates a hash from a password.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="password">The password.</param>
    /// <param name="iterations">Number of iterations.</param>
    /// <returns>The hash.</returns>
    public static string Hash(string password, int iterations)
    {
        // Create salt
        byte[] salt;
        new RNGCryptoServiceProvider().GetBytes(salt = new byte[SaltSize]);

        // Create hash
        var pbkdf2 = new Rfc2898DeriveBytes(password, salt, iterations);
        var hash = pbkdf2.GetBytes(HashSize);

        // Combine salt and hash
        var hashBytes = new byte[SaltSize + HashSize];
        Array.Copy(salt, 0, hashBytes, 0, SaltSize);
        Array.Copy(hash, 0, hashBytes, SaltSize, HashSize);

        // Convert to base64
        var base64Hash = Convert.ToBase64String(hashBytes);

        // Format hash with extra information
        return string.Format("$MYHASH$V1${0}${1}", iterations, base64Hash);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Creates a hash from a password with 10000 iterations
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="password">The password.</param>
    /// <returns>The hash.</returns>
    public static string Hash(string password)
    {
        return Hash(password, 10000);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Checks if hash is supported.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="hashString">The hash.</param>
    /// <returns>Is supported?</returns>
    public static bool IsHashSupported(string hashString)
    {
        return hashString.Contains("$MYHASH$V1$");
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Verifies a password against a hash.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="password">The password.</param>
    /// <param name="hashedPassword">The hash.</param>
    /// <returns>Could be verified?</returns>
    public static bool Verify(string password, string hashedPassword)
    {
        // Check hash
        if (!IsHashSupported(hashedPassword))
        {
            throw new NotSupportedException("The hashtype is not supported");
        }

        // Extract iteration and Base64 string
        var splittedHashString = hashedPassword.Replace("$MYHASH$V1$", "").Split('$');
        var iterations = int.Parse(splittedHashString[0]);
        var base64Hash = splittedHashString[1];

        // Get hash bytes
        var hashBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(base64Hash);

        // Get salt
        var salt = new byte[SaltSize];
        Array.Copy(hashBytes, 0, salt, 0, SaltSize);

        // Create hash with given salt
        var pbkdf2 = new Rfc2898DeriveBytes(password, salt, iterations);
        byte[] hash = pbkdf2.GetBytes(HashSize);

        // Get result
        for (var i = 0; i < HashSize; i++)
        {
            if (hashBytes[i + SaltSize] != hash[i])
            {
                return false;
            }
        }
        return true;
    }
}

Usage:

// Hash
var hash = SecurePasswordHasher.Hash("mypassword");

// Verify
var result = SecurePasswordHasher.Verify("mypassword", hash);

A sample hash could be this:

$MYHASH$V1$10000$Qhxzi6GNu/Lpy3iUqkeqR/J1hh8y/h5KPDjrv89KzfCVrubn

As you can see, I also have included the iterations in the hash for easy usage and the possibility to upgrade this, if we need to upgrade.


If you are interested in .net core, I also have a .net core version on Code Review.


UPDATE: THIS ANSWER IS SERIOUSLY OUTDATED. Please use the recommendations from the https://stackoverflow.com/a/10402129/251311 instead.

You can either use

var md5 = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();
var md5data = md5.ComputeHash(data);

or

var sha1 = new SHA1CryptoServiceProvider();
var sha1data = sha1.ComputeHash(data);

To get data as byte array you could use

var data = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(password);

and to get back string from md5data or sha1data

var hashedPassword = ASCIIEncoding.GetString(md5data);

I use a hash and a salt for my password encryption (it's the same hash that Asp.Net Membership uses):

private string PasswordSalt
{
   get
   {
      var rng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider();
      var buff = new byte[32];
      rng.GetBytes(buff);
      return Convert.ToBase64String(buff);
   }
}

private string EncodePassword(string password, string salt)
{
   byte[] bytes = Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(password);
   byte[] src = Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(salt);
   byte[] dst = new byte[src.Length + bytes.Length];
   Buffer.BlockCopy(src, 0, dst, 0, src.Length);
   Buffer.BlockCopy(bytes, 0, dst, src.Length, bytes.Length);
   HashAlgorithm algorithm = HashAlgorithm.Create("SHA1");
   byte[] inarray = algorithm.ComputeHash(dst);
   return Convert.ToBase64String(inarray);
}