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Programs that store a password passwords as cleartext (unencrypted text data) risk exposure of the password those passwords in a variety of ways. Although programs generally receive passwords from users as cleartext, they should ensure that the passwords are not stored as cleartext.

An acceptable technique for limiting the exposure of passwords is the use of hash functions, which allow programs to indirectly compare an input password to the original password string without storing a cleartext or decryptable version of the password. This approach minimizes the exposure of the password without presenting any practical disadvantages.

Cryptographic Hash Functions

The value produced by a hash function is the hash valueor  or message digest. Hash functions are computationally feasible functions whose inverses are computationally infeasible. In practice, a password can be encoded to a hash value, but decoding remains infeasible. The equality of the passwords can be tested through the equality of their hash values.

Always append A good practice is to always use a salt in addition to the password being hashed. A salt is a unique (often sequential), or randomly generated , piece of data that is stored along with and used to generate the hash value . The use of a salt helps prevent brute-force attacks against the hash value provided the salt is long enough to generate sufficient entropy (shorter salt values cannot significantly slow down a brute-force attack). Each along with the password. Each password should have its own salt associated with it. If  If a single salt were used for more than one password an attacker could determine when a user has a commonly used password, two users would be able to see whether their passwords are the same. Password specific salts are usually stored along with their corresponding hash values. In addition to password-unique salts, system-unique salts that are stored separately from the hash values may also be used to increase the difficulty of deriving passwords if a malicious actor obtains a copy of the hash values and salts.

The choice of hash function and salt length presents a trade-off between security and performance. Increases in the time required to compute hash values raise Increasing the effort required for effective brute-force attacks but make the program slower when validating a password. Increasing the length of the salt makes brute-force attacks more difficult but requires additional storage spaceby choosing a stronger hash function can also increase the time required to validate a password.  As time passes best practices around password management evolve to keep password derivation computationally infeasible.  The documents NIST 800-63 and OWASP ASVS are good places to consult for the current best practices around cryptographic hashing.

Java's MessageDigest class javax.crypto package provides implementations of various cryptographic hash functions. Avoid defective functions such that have known weaknesses, such as the Message-Digest Algorithm (MD5). Hash functions such as Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)-1 and SHA-2 are maintained by the National Security Agency and are currently considered safe. 

Noncompliant Code Example

This noncompliant code example encrypts and decrypts the password stored in credentials.pw password.bin using a symmetric key algorithm:

public final class Password {
  private void setPassword(byte[] pass) throws Exception {
    // Arbitrary encryption scheme
    bytesbyte[] encrypted = encrypt(pass); // Arbitrary encryption scheme
    clearArray(pass);    
    // Encrypted password to password.bin
    saveBytes(encrypted,"password.bin");
 // Encrypted password to password.binclearArray(encrypted); 
  }

  private boolean checkPassword(byte[] pass) throws Exception {
    // Load the boolean arrays_equal;encrypted password
    byte[] encrypted = loadBytes("password.bin"); // Load the encrypted password
    byte[] decrypted = decrypt(encrypted);
    clearArray(encrypted);
    boolean arrays_equalarraysEqual = Arrays.equal(decrypted, pass);
    clearArray(decrypted);
    clearArray(pass);
    return arrays_equalarraysEqual;
  }

  private void clearArray(byte[] a) {
    for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
      a[i] = 0;
    }
  }

  private byte[] encrypt(byte[] clearValue) {
    // ... symmetric encryption of clearValue bytes, returning the encrypted value
  }

  private byte[] decrypt(byte[] encryptedValue) {
    // ... symmetric decryption of  encryptedValue bytes, returning clear value
  }

  private void saveBytes(byte[] bytes, String filename) throws IOException {
    // ... write bytes to the file
  }
  
  private byte[] loadBytes(String filename) throws IOException { 
    // ... read bytes to the file 
  }
}

This is a very simple password mechanism that only stores one password for the system.  The flaw in this approach is that the stored password is encrypted in a way that it can be decrypted to compare it to the user's password input. An attacker could potentially decrypt this the password file to discover the password. The attacker could be someone who knows or has figured out the encryption scheme being , particularly when the attacker has knowledge of the key and encryption scheme used by the program. Passwords should be protected even from system administrators and privileged users. Consequently, using encryption is only partly effective in mitigating password disclosure threats.

Noncompliant Code Example

This noncompliant code example implements uses the SHA-1256 hash function through the MessageDigest class to compare hash values instead of cleartext strings, but . It uses SecureRandom to generate a strong salt, as recommended by MSC02-J. Generate strong random numbers.  However, it uses a String to store the password:

import java.security.MessageDigest;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;

public final class Password {
  private SecureRandom random = new SecureRandom();

  private void setPassword(String pass) throws Exception {
    byte[] salt = generateSalt(12 new byte[12];
    random.nextBytes(salt);
    MessageDigest sha_1msgDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-1256");
    // Encode the string and salt
    byte[] hashVal = sha_1msgDigest.digest((pass+salt).getBytes()); // Encode the string and salt
    saveBytes(salt, "salt.bin");
    saveBytes(hashVal,"password.bin"); // Save the hash value to password.bin
    saveBytes(hashVal,"password.bin");
  }

  private boolean checkPassword(String pass) throws Exception {
    byte[] salt = loadBytes("salt.bin");
    MessageDigest sha_1msgDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-1256");
    // Encode the string and salt
    byte[] hashVal1 = sha_1msgDigest.digest((pass+salt).getBytes());
    // EncodeLoad the hash stringvalue stored andin saltpassword.bin
    byte[] hashVal2 = loadBytes("password.bin"); // Load the hash value stored in password.bin
    return Arrays.equals(hashVal1, hashVal2);
  }

  private void saveBytes(byte[] generateSalt(int n) bytes, String filename) throws IOException {
    // Generate a random byte array of length n ... write bytes to the file
  }   

  private byte[] loadBytes(String filename) throws IOException { 
    // ... read bytes to the file 
  }
}

This is a very simple password mechanism that only stores one password and one salt for the system. Even when an attacker knows that the program stores passwords using SHA-1 256 and a 12-byte salt, he or she will be unable to retrieve the unencrypted actual password from password.bin and salt.bin.

Although this approach fixes solves the decryption problem from the previous noncompliant code example, at runtime this code program may inadvertently store the passwords as cleartext in memory. Java string String objects are immutable and can be copied and internally stored by the Java Virtual Machine. Consequently, Java lacks a mechanism to securely erase a password once it has been stored in a String. See MSC63MSC59-JGJ. Limit the lifetime of sensitive data for more information.

Compliant Solution

This compliant solution addresses the problems from the previous noncompliant code example by using a byte array to store the passwordexamples:

import java.security.MessageDigestGeneralSecurityException;
import java.security.SecureRandom;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;

public spec.KeySpec;
import javax.crypto.SecretKeyFactory;
import javax.crypto.spec.PBEKeySpec;
  
final class Password {

  private void setPassword(byte[] pass) throws Exception {SecureRandom random = new SecureRandom();
  private final byte[] saltint SALT_BYTE_LENGTH = generateSalt(12);
  private final byte[]int inputITERATIONS = appendArrays(pass, salt)100000;
  private final MessageDigestString sha_1ALGORITHM = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-1");
    byte[] hashVal = sha_1.digest(input); // Encode the string and salt   
    clearArray(pass);   
    clearArray(input"PBKDF2WithHmacSHA256";
    
  /* Set password to new value, zeroing out password */
  void setPassword(char[] pass)
      throws IOException, GeneralSecurityException  {
    byte[] salt = new byte[SALT_BYTE_LENGTH];
    random.nextBytes(salt);
    saveBytes(salt, "salt.bin");    
    byte[] hashVal = hashPassword(pass, salt); 
    saveBytes(hashVal,"password.bin");
 // Save the hash value to password.bin Arrays.fill(hashVal, (byte) 0);
  }

  /* Indicates if given  privatepassword is correct */
  boolean checkPassword(bytechar[] pass)
      throws ExceptionIOException, GeneralSecurityException  {
    byte[] salt = loadBytes("salt.bin");
    byte[] inputhashVal1 = appendArrayshashPassword(pass, salt);
    MessageDigest sha_1// Load the hash value stored in password.bin
    byte[] hashVal2 = MessageDigest.getInstanceloadBytes("SHA-1password.bin");
    byte[]boolean hashVal1arraysEqual = sha_1.digest(inputtimingEquals(hashVal1, hashVal2);
 // Encode the string and salt Arrays.fill(hashVal1, (byte) 0);
    clearArray(passArrays.fill(hashVal2, (byte) 0);
    clearArray(input)return arraysEqual;
  }
  
  /* Encrypts password & salt and zeroes both */
  private byte[] hashPassword(char[] pass, byte[] hashVal2salt)
      throws GeneralSecurityException {
    KeySpec spec = loadBytes("password.bin"); // Load the hash value stored in password.binnew PBEKeySpec(pass, salt, ITERATIONS);
    Arrays.fill(pass, (char) 0);
    Arrays.fill(salt, (byte) 0);
    SecretKeyFactory f = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance(ALGORITHM);
    return Arrays.equals(hashVal1, hashVal2f.generateSecret(spec).getEncoded();
  }

  /**
   private* Indicates if both byte[] generateSalt(int n) {
arrays are equal
   *  // Generate a random byte array of length n
  }

  private byte[] appendArrays(byte[] a, byte[] b) {
    // Return a new array of a appended to b
  }

  private clearArray(byte[] a) {
    but uses same amount of time if they are the same or different
   * to prevent timing attacks
   */
  public static boolean timingEquals(byte b1[], byte b2[]) {
    boolean result = true;
    int len = b1.length;
    if (len != b2.length) {
      result = false;
    }
    if (len > b2.length) {
      len = b2.length;
    }
    for (int i = 0; i < a.lengthlen; i++) {
      aresult &= (b1[i] == 0b2[i]);
    }
    return result;
  }

  private void saveBytes(byte[] bytes, String filename) throws IOException {
    // ... write bytes to the file
  }

  private byte[] loadBytes(String filename) throws IOException {
    // ... read bytes to the file
  }
}

This is a very simple password mechanism that only stores one password and one salt for the system.

First, this compliant solution uses byte array to store the password.

In both the setPassword() and checkPassword() methods, the cleartext representation of the password is erased immediately after it is converted into a hash value. Consequently, attackers must work much harder to retrieve the cleartext password after the erasure. Providing truly guaranteed erasure is extremely challenging, is likely to be platform - specific, and may even be impossible because of the involvement of copying garbage collectors, dynamic paging, and other platform features that operate below the level of the Java language. Note, however, that most other languages share these complications (with the exception of garbage collection).

Furthermore, we use a timingEquals() method to validate the password. While doing a simple byte comparison, it takes the same time for both successful matches and unsuccessful ones; consequently thwarting timing attacks.

Finally, it uses PBKDF2 which, unlike MessageDigest, is specifically designed for hashing passwords.

The parametric values (SALT_BYTE_LENGTH, ITERATIONS, ALGORITHM) should be set to values that reflect current best practices.  It should also be noted that once these parametric values are set they can not be changed without having to re-hash all passwords with the new parametric values.  

Applicability

Passwords stored without a secure hash are exposed to malicious users. Violations of this guideline generally have a clear exploit associated with them.

Applications such as password managers may need to retrieve the original password in order to enter it into a third-party application. This is permitted even though it violates the this guideline. The password manager is accessed by a single user and always has the user's permission to store his or her passwords and to display those passwords on command. Consequently, the limit limiting factor to safety and security is the user's competence rather than the program's operation.

Automated Detection

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Related Guidelines

Bibliography

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