[wp-hackers] Should password hashing portability be configurable?

[Harry Metcalfe]

Nah. It's good. The individual salts are much better than having one 
salt for everything.

I think it uses MD5 because that's the only one that's supported by 
pretty much every version of PHP.

Harry


On 07/11/12 18:57, CloudPress Hosting wrote:
> Sounds a bit over complicated. I wonder why they would not just use SHA256
> with salt.
>
> On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Harry Metcalfe <harry at dxw.com> wrote:
>
>> No. In a nutshell:
>>
>> No, it's not just MD5. It's PHPASS, which (for WordPress) uses MD5 as a
>> cryptographic primitive. But there's more going on than that -- there are
>> multiple rounds of hashing, plus a salt that's unique to each hashed
>> password.
>>
>> It's not a bad system. It's just not as good as bcrypt.
>>
>> Harry
>>
>>
>>
>> On 07/11/12 18:47, CloudPress Hosting wrote:
>>
>>> To make sure I am understanding you are you saying account passwords are
>>> hashed with MD5? I would certainly hope not.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 6:18 AM, Harry Metcalfe <harry at dxw.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>   I've been investigating switching the sites we host to bcrypt, rather
>>>> than
>>>> MD5, which is the default. That MD5 is the default is regrettable but
>>>> understandable given WordPress's need to remain portable. I understand
>>>> that
>>>> if the site was moved to a server without bcrypt support, those accounts
>>>> would no longer be accessible. However, if that is not a consideration,
>>>> it
>>>> would surely be better for people to use bcrypt than MD5.
>>>>
>>>> I was going to make change on our sites by switching the portable flags
>>>> in
>>>> wp_check_password and wp_hash_password to false, after moving those
>>>> functions into a plugin. This makes new passwords bcrypt and maintains
>>>> backwards compatibility for passwords hashed using MD5. However, it
>>>> misses
>>>> the hashes which are created for password-protected posts, which happens
>>>> in
>>>> a function that is not pluggable.
>>>>
>>>> I've therefore created a global $wp_hasher instance (without portability)
>>>> in a plugin, which I think should get called before WordPress has a
>>>> chance
>>>> to make it.
>>>>
>>>> Questions:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Is that right? Is there a scenario where WordPress will make a
>>>>      wp_hasher before my mu plugin gets loaded, thereby preventing
>>>>      someone from logging in?
>>>> 2. Is it worth adding a WP_UNPORTABLE_PASSWORDS define so that people
>>>>      who want to make the switch can do so without having to fiddle with
>>>>      wp_hasher?
>>>>
>>>> Harry
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