Re: MD5 authentication needs help

Bruce, all,

* Bruce Momjian (bruce@momjian.us) wrote:
> It feels like MD5 has accumulated enough problems that we need to start
> looking for another way to store and pass passwords.  The MD5 problems
> are:
>
> 1)  MD5 makes users feel uneasy (though our usage is mostly safe)
>
> 2)  The per-session salt sent to the client is only 32-bits, meaning
> that it is possible to reply an observed MD5 hash in ~16k connection
> attempts.
>
> 3)  Using the user name for the MD5 storage salt allows the MD5 stored
> hash to be used on a different cluster if the user used the same
> password.
>
> 4)  Using the user name for the MD5 storage salt causes the renaming of
> a user to break the stored password.
>
> For these reasons, it is probably time to start thinking about a
> replacement that fixes these issues.  We would keep MD5 but recommend
> a better option.

For more background, I'd suggest taking a look at this recent thread:

CA+TgmoaWdkNBT4mNZ+wf=fgjd7aV9bq7NtsvCha7yeoX0LyQPg@mail.gmail.com
Thanks!
    Stephen