how to store passwords in database?

Question

I use jsp and servlets in my web application. i need to store passwords in the database. I found that hashing will be the best way to do that. I used this code to do it.

                <%@page import="com.jSurvey.entity.*"    %>
    <%@page import="java.security.MessageDigest" %>
    <%@page import="java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException" %>
    <%@page import="java.math.BigInteger" %>
    <%@page import="com.jSurvey.controller.*" %>
    <%@page import="sun.misc.BASE64Encoder" %>
    <%try {
                    String user = request.getParameter("Username");
                    String pass = request.getParameter("Password1");
                    String name = request.getParameter("Name");
                    String mail = request.getParameter("email");
                    String phone = request.getParameter("phone");
                    String add1 = request.getParameter("address1");
                    String add2 = request.getParameter("address2");
                    String country = request.getParameter("country");
                    Login login = new Login();
                    Account account = new Account();

                    login.setId(user);
                    login.setPassword(pass);
                    if (!(add1.equals(""))) {
                        account.setAddress1(add1);
                    }
                    if (!(add2.equals(""))) {
                        account.setAddress2(add2);
                    }
                    if (!(country.equals(""))) {
                        account.setCountry(country);
                    }
                    account.setId(user);
                    account.setMail_id(mail);
                    if (!(phone.equals(""))) {
                        account.setPhone_no(Long.parseLong(phone));
                    }
                    account.setName(name);
                    java.security.MessageDigest d = null;
                    d = java.security.MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-1");
                    d.reset();
                    d.update(pass.getBytes("UTF-8"));
                    byte b[] = d.digest();
                    String tmp = (new BASE64Encoder()).encode(b);

                    account.setPassword(tmp);
                    account.setPrivilege(1);
                    LoginJpaController logcon = new LoginJpaController();
                    AccountJpaController acccon = new AccountJpaController();
                    logcon.create(login);
                    acccon.create(account);
                    session.setAttribute("user", user);
                    response.sendRedirect("dashboard.jsp");
                } catch (NumberFormatException ex) {
                    out.println("Invalid data");
                }
    %>

When i tried to print the value of tmp, i get some other value.i guess its the hash value of the password. But when i persist this data to the database the original password gets saved there other than the value in tmp..

I am using java derby as the database.

What is the problem???

Answer 1

Apache has a commons library, namely Commons Codec, that makes it easier to encode the password. It will do the entire job for you.

import org.apache.commons.codec.digest.DigestUtils;

String pw = DigestUtils.sha256Hex(password);

Or if you want base64:

import org.apache.commons.codec.digest.DigestUtils;
import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64;

byte[] pwBytes = DigestUtils.sha(password);
String b64Pass = Base64.encodeBase64String(pwBytes);