Security of Passwords

Abstract

Authentication has become a very important security mechanism. Recently, many attackers have been looking to attack organisations’password databases, since they are the sources which attackers can potentially used to gain unauthorised access to information, network and resources. Therefore, it is important to understand how to securely choose and store passwords in such a way that it can prevent attackers from learning what the users’passwords are. This paper discusses many aspects of password security, starting from a way to generate a secure password to ways to securely store a password. It will be explained that the most common method used to store passwords today, i.e., MD5 or SHA-1 hashing, may not be the best solution. Thus, better solutions in salting passwords and using slower hash functions are introduced.