It seems it started a flamewar about sha1 and bcrypt. First: scrypt (http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/ http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/) is far better than bcrypt.

It seems it started a flamewar about sha1 and bcrypt. First: scrypt (http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/ http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/) is far better than bcrypt. Second here is the general idea behind the scrypt algorithm (from the scrypt slides): Algorithm ROMix: Given a hash function H, an input B (the user password), and an integer parameter N (computational hardness), compute:  V_i =H^i(B) (0 <= i < N) and X = H^N(B), then iterate j ← Integerify(X ) mod N X ← H (X ⊕ Vj ) N times; and output X. The function Integerify can be any bijection from {0, 1}^k to {0...2^k −1}. Theorem: Under the random oracle model, the class of functions ROMix are sequential memory-hard. More intuitively, V_0 = H(B) V_1 = H(H(B)) ... X = V_N = H(H( ... H(B) ...) ) V_i are filled with pseudo random values. Then the algorithm access them in pseudo random order. Which means that is is not only very long to compute but also need a lot of memory. Now zealot should say _use scrypt_! not bcrypt. And also, even if cryptography is difficult, the idea behind is not so difficult.