4 ms·

Hashing can be done in a stored procedure. Maybe the organization decided that it's better for the DBA to handle hashing. Nonstandard maybe but not necessarily

by Wingy 3y ago

Hashing can be done in a stored procedure. Maybe the organization decided that it's better for the DBA to handle hashing. Nonstandard maybe but not necessarily bad.

duskwuff 3y ago
> Hashing can be done in a stored procedure. [...] Nonstandard maybe but not necessarily bad. No, it's unambiguously bad. You're transmitting a cleartext password to a system which doesn't have a business need to know it, and which wasn't designed to process secret data. There's a substantial risk that the database may leak that data in some unexpected way, e.g. by logging it when an error occurs or by showing the parameter in a process list. Worse, a stored procedure can potentially be covertly modified to store or exfiltrate the password while hashing it.
- junon 3y ago
  To be clear, this only improves security if the user reuses passwords.
- Wingy 3y ago
  That's true, the hashing should definitely be done as early as possible. "As early as possible" is interesting. It could be done on the client, however you need to actually have the hash to check if a string hashes to the same as it because of the salts embedded in the strings. Using an algorithm without salting would allow you to hash the password on the client then allow arbitrary 32 (or however long your hash digests are) character strings on the server as a password equivalent. This would also protect from a misconfigured or malicious server logging unhashed passwords.
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    > It could be done on the client No, that's actually too early -- if you let the client hash the password, you're vulnerable to a "pass-the-hash" attack where the client submits a hash without knowing the password. There are protocols like SRP and other PAKEs which allow this to be done securely, but it's uncommon for them to be used in web applications.
    - Wingy 3y ago
      My reasoning was that if you can capture the hash, you could have also captured the password but that doesn't account for a situation where the database is compromised.

by Wingy 3y ago

Hashing can be done in a stored procedure. Maybe the organization decided that it's better for the DBA to handle hashing. Nonstandard maybe but not necessarily bad.

duskwuff 3y ago

> Hashing can be done in a stored procedure. [...] Nonstandard maybe but not necessarily bad. No, it's unambiguously bad. You're transmitting a cleartext password to a system which doesn't have a business need to know it, and which wasn't designed to process secret data. There's a substantial risk that the database may leak that data in some unexpected way, e.g. by logging it when an error occurs or by showing the parameter in a process list. Worse, a stored procedure can potentially be covertly modified to store or exfiltrate the password while hashing it.

junon 3y ago
To be clear, this only improves security if the user reuses passwords.
Wingy 3y ago
That's true, the hashing should definitely be done as early as possible. "As early as possible" is interesting. It could be done on the client, however you need to actually have the hash to check if a string hashes to the same as it because of the salts embedded in the strings. Using an algorithm without salting would allow you to hash the password on the client then allow arbitrary 32 (or however long your hash digests are) character strings on the server as a password equivalent. This would also protect from a misconfigured or malicious server logging unhashed passwords.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  > It could be done on the client No, that's actually too early -- if you let the client hash the password, you're vulnerable to a "pass-the-hash" attack where the client submits a hash without knowing the password. There are protocols like SRP and other PAKEs which allow this to be done securely, but it's uncommon for them to be used in web applications.
  - Wingy 3y ago
    My reasoning was that if you can capture the hash, you could have also captured the password but that doesn't account for a situation where the database is compromised.