Are you using a single Password for all of your online accounts? If yes, you are probably at risk of your privacy. Research said the average person uses 5 separate passwords for their accounts, which makes it very difficult to remember all of them. So people use password managers to keep passwords safe.

If you want to make sure your passwords are safe and secure, make sure you use randomized password generators like Password Generator and randomized password generator. This helps you to create confident and robust passwords.

Importance of strong passwords

Cybercriminals develop malware every year to target your passwords. So It is necessary to save passwords from cyberattacks. Here are some examples of the importance of strong passwords:

1. Strong passwords reduce the risk of legal trouble by preventing hackers from using one’s device to break the law or harm others.
2. A strong password helps us to prevent financial fraud and identity theft by making it harder to password leak online. Strong passwords that contain at least 14 characters need more than 100 years to crack.
3. Strong passwords help to resist the leakage of banking information.
4. Strong passwords help to stop and deter hackers from targeting one’s device by making it more time-consuming and costly to crack the password.
5. Strong passwords enable a person to have more control over their device and their data by preventing unauthorized access from modifying, deleting, or stealing it.

Role of password algorithms in enhancing security

Password algorithms play a crucial role in enhancing password security. It helps to strengthen the protection of the user’s information and accounts. These algorithms are used to secure passwords and make it more difficult for attackers to compromise accounts. These algorithms help to prevent brute force attacks that are trying to steal the password of a user.

What are password algorithms?

• A password algorithm is a type of algorithm or function. It is utilized to create and authenticate passwords, authentication like PINs, and security questions.
• These algorithms are designed to enhance password security and make them more challenging to crack. They employ a range of techniques such as hashing, salting, and character substitution. Given the rising prevalence of data breaches and cyber attacks, it is crucial to have robust and secure passwords that malicious individuals cannot easily guess.
• Password algorithms serve as the fundamental building blocks for establishing and overseeing secure passwords, thereby helping safeguard both individuals and businesses against potential threats.

How password algorithms work

Password algorithms are designed to enhance password security and make header guesses by malware. They function as:

Hashing is a process of password algorithm that converts a password into a string ( fixed-length string) of characters. After changing into a string, it is not easy to reverse. It required the encryption key to change into character. This makes it more difficult for hackers to steal passwords.

Character substitution–  It is a process of password algorithm to replace some characters in a password with other characters, such as numbers or symbols.

hash password

It is also known as password hashing. It is a one-way cryptographic representation of a password. It is created using a mathematical algorithm. This mathematical function is called a hash function.

The primary purpose of Hashing passwords is to enhance and improve security. It protects the original, plaintext password from being easily exposed in the event of a data breach or unauthorized access.

How does password hashing work?

Here’s how the process functions:

1. Password Hashing: When a user creates an account or updates their password, the password they provide is subjected to a hash function. This function transforms the password into a fixed-length string of characters, typically consisting of numbers and letters.
2. Fixed Length: One important characteristic of hash functions is that they consistently generate hash values of the same length, regardless of the length of the input password.
3. For example, the SHA-256 hash function always produces a 256-bit (32-byte) hash value.
4. Deterministic: The same input (password) will always produce the same hash value. This property enables password verification during the login process.
5. One-Way Process: Hashing is a process that cannot be reversed computationally, making it practically impossible to retrieve the original password from the hash value. This is why hashed passwords are considered more secure than storing passwords in plaintext.
6. Salt: To further enhance security, a random value known as a “salt” is frequently added to the password before hashing. Each user typically has a unique salt. The purpose of salting is to ensure that even if two users have the same password, their hashed passwords will differ due to the distinct salt. This prevents attacks such as rainbow table attacks.
7. Storage: In a secure system, only the hashed password and salt (if utilized) are stored in the database, while the plaintext password is not retained.

Best Password Algorithms and password algorithm examples

1. bcrypt

Bycrypt is a type of password algorithm and widely used to encrypt the passwords. It is a hashing algorithm that incorporates a work factor or cost factor. This work determines the number of computational iterations required to hash a password. The higher the cost factor, the more secure the hashing process.

bcrypt is a password-hashing function designed by Niels Provos and David Mazières. First published in 1999 and bcrypt is an adaptive function.

Source- Wikipedia

2. Argon2

Aragon2 is a modern and seems to be a highly secure password-hashing algorithm. It won the Password Hashing Competition (PHC) for best password encryption. It is designed to resist both side-channel attacks and brute force attacks. That is one of the reasons to become one of the most secure hashing algorithms.

Key features of Argon2:

1. Require hard memory– Argon2 requires significant memory to thwart memory-efficient attacks.
2. Configurability– Argon2 allows you to adjust parameters like time cost, memory cost, and parallelism.

Argon2 is a key derivation function that was selected as the winner of the 2015 Password Hashing Competition. It was first designed by Alex Biryukov, Daniel Dinu, and Dmitry Khovratovich from the University of Luxembourg.

Source: Wikipedia

3. PBKDF2 (Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2)

PBKDF2 is another type of password algorithm used to encrypt the password. It applies a pseudorandom function to a password along with a salt. It iterates the process multiple times.

Key Features of Key Features:

• Customizable iterations– You can set the number of iterations, making it more computationally expensive.
• Salting: PBKDF2 incorporates a salt to prevent rainbow table attacks.

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.

Source: Wikipedia

4. scrypt

It requires more memory to decrypt so it is known for hard-memory. It is designed to tough for hardware accelerated bruted force attacks. It is a memory-hard key derivation function and is designed to be resistant to both brute force and hardware acceleration attacks.

Key Features of Scrypt:

• Memory-intensive– It is memory memory-intensive password algorithm.
• Adjustable parameters: You can tune scrypt by adjusting parameters like N, r, and p to increase the computational cost.
• It also supports Salting.

5. SHA-256 and SHA-3

SHA-256 is a cryptographic hash password algorithm. It produces a fixed-size, 256-bit hash value which is 32-byte. It is widely used for various security applications, including hashing passwords.

Like SHA-256, SHA-3 is not tailored for password security and lacks features such as salting and adaptive hashing.

SHA-3 (Secure Hash Algorithm 3) is the latest member of the Secure Hash Algorithm family of standards, released by NIST on August 5, 2015. SHA-3 is internally different from the MD5-like structure of SHA-1 and SHA-2.

Source: Wikipedia

6. bcrypt.NET

bcrypt.NET is known for .NET library. It provides a C# implementation of the bcrypt password hashing password algorithm. It simplifies the process of securely hashing. bcrypt.NET automatically handles tasks such as generating salts and hashing.

7. Passlib

Passlib is known as a Python library for handling password hashing. It also supports authentication. It supports various password hashing algorithms, including bcrypt, Argon2, and more. It is commonly used in Python applications to enhance password security.

To get more information Read here.

8. Password Hashing Competitions (bcrypt, scrypt, Argon2)

• These competitions, such as the Password Hashing Competition (PHC), aim to identify and standardize secure password hashing algorithms.
• The winners of these competitions, including bcrypt, scrypt, and Argon2, have become widely adopted in the industry due to their robust security features.

9. Libsodium

Libsodium is known for its modern and easy-to-use software library. It is used for encryption, decryption, signatures, password hashing, and more.

Libsodium includes functions for using secure hashing passwords using algorithms like Argon2 and script. This makes it a valuable tool for enhancing password security.

Libsodium — a portable, cross-compilable, installable, packageable, API-compatible version of NaCl

Source: wikipedia

10. OpenSSL

• OpenSSL is a widely used open-source cryptographic library. It provides a wide range of cryptographic functions and tools.
• It includes functions for hashing passwords using various algorithms, such as SHA-256 and SHA-512.

OpenSSL contains an open-source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. it is Initial release in 1998.

source: Wikipedia

Best practices for using password algorithms

Tips for creating strong passwords using algorithms