To that end, you might want to consider storing the salts in a different place; or using just one common 'secret salt' that isn't stored anywhere in the DB.

Using a constant "secret salt" a bad idea, because identical passwords generate identical hashes. This makes attacks much easier than they should be: The bad guy sets his password to a common trivial password, say "123456", reads the login names and hashes from the DB, and instantly knows all logins that use this password simply because they have the same hash value as his account. Repeat for a long list of weak passwords and you will get a good list of login names and passwords. This can't happen with random salt values.

The only advantage of a constant "secret salt" over not using a salt at all is that you need to generate a new set of rainbow tables for the specific salt value.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

In reply to Re^2: SaltedDigest Salt? by afoken
in thread SaltedDigest Salt? by packetstormer

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