Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Understanding Optimizations and Measuring Performances of PBKDF2

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
2nd International Conference on Wireless Intelligent and Distributed Environment for Communication (WIDECOM 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes on Data Engineering and Communications Technologies ((LNDECT,volume 27))

Abstract

Password-based key derivation functions (KDFs) are used to generate secure keys of arbitrary length implemented in many security-related systems. The strength of these KDFs is the ability to provide countermeasures against brute-force/dictionary attacks. One of the most implemented KDFs is PBKDF2. In order to slow attackers down, PBKDF2 uses a salt and introduces computational intensive operations based on an iterated pseudorandom function. Since passwords are widely used to protect personal data and to authenticate users to access specific resources, if an application uses a small iteration count value, the strength of PBKDF2 against attacks performed on low-cost commodity hardware may be reduced. In this paper we introduce the cryptographic algorithms involved in the key derivation process, describing the optimization techniques used to speed up PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA1 in a GPU/CPU context. Finally, a testing activity has been executed on consumer-grade hardware, and experimental results are reported.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    In this section, we partially describe the SHA-1 algorithm. Further details can be found in [26].

References

  1. C.E. Shannon, Prediction and entropy of printed English. Bell Syst. Tech. J. 30(1), 50–64 (1951)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. H. Krawczyk, Cryptographic extraction and key derivation: the HKDF scheme. Cryptology ePrint Archive. Report 2010/264 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  3. K. Moriarty, B. Kaliski, A. Rusch, PKCS# 5: password-based cryptography specification version 2.1. RFC 8018 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Password hashing competition. https://password-hashing.net/. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  5. A. Biryukov, D. Dinu, D. Khovratovich, Argon2 (version 1.2). University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg. https://password-hashing.net/submissions/specs/Argon-v3.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  6. C. Forler, S. Lucks, J. Wenzel, Catena: a memory-consuming password-scrambling framework. Cryptology ePrint Archive. Report 2013/525 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  7. M.A. Simplicio Jr., L.C. Almeida, E.R. Andrade, P.C. dos Santos, P.S. Barreto, Lyra2: password hashing scheme with improved security against time-memory trade-offs. Cryptology ePrint Archive. Report 2015/136 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  8. A. Peslyak, yescrypt – password hashing scalable beyond bcrypt and scrypt. Openwall, Inc. (2014). http://www.openwall.com/presentations/PHDays2014-Yescrypt/. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  9. T. Pornin, The MAKWA password hashing function (2015). http://www.bolet.org/makwa/makwa-spec-20150422.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  10. Wi-Fi alliance: discover wi-fi: specifications. https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/specifications. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  11. iOS security guide (2017). https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  12. C. Fruhwirth, LUKS on-disk format specification version 1.2.2 (2016). https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/LUKS-standard/on-disk-format.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  13. A. Visconti, H. Tahayori, Detecting misbehaving nodes in MANET with an artificial immune system based on type-2 fuzzy sets, in 2009 International Conference for Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (ICITST) (2009), pp. 1–2

    Google Scholar 

  14. M.T. Rahman, M.J.N. Mahi, Proposal for SZRP protocol with the establishment of the salted SHA-256 Bit HMAC PBKDF2 advance security system in a MANET, in 2014 International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information Communication Technology (2014), pp. 1–5

    Google Scholar 

  15. Enpass. https://www.enpass.io. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  16. F-secure key. https://www.f-secure.com/en/web/home_global/key. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  17. AgileBits: how PBKDF2 strengthens your master password. https://support.1password.com/pbkdf2/. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  18. LassPass: password iterations (PBKDF2). https://helpdesk.lastpass.com/account-settings/general/password-iterations-pbkdf2/. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  19. Keeper: keeper’s best-in-class security. https://keepersecurity.com/security.html. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  20. A. Belenko, D. Sklyarov, “Secure Password Managers” and “Military-Grade Encryption” on Smartphones: Oh, Really? Blackhat Europe (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  21. L. Casati, A. Visconti, Exploiting a bad user practice to retrieve data leakage on android password managers, in Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Innovative Mobile and Internet Services in Ubiquitous Computing, IMIS 2017 (Springer, Berlin, 2017)

    Google Scholar 

  22. L. Casati, A. Visconti, The dangers of rooting: data leakage detection in android applications. Mob. Inf. Syst. 2018, 6020461 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/6020461

    Google Scholar 

  23. M.S. Turan, E.B. Barker, W.E. Burr, L. Chen, SP 800-132. Recommendation for password-based key derivation. Part 1: storage applications (2010). http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication800-132.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  24. A. Visconti, S. Bossi, H. Ragab, A. Caló, On the weaknesses of PBKDF2, in Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Cryptology and Network Security, CANS 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 9476 (Springer, Berlin, 2015)

    Google Scholar 

  25. A. Visconti, F. Gorla, Exploiting an HMAC-SHA-1 optimization to speed up PBKDF2. IEEE Trans. Dependable Secure Comput. (2018). https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2018.2878697

  26. NIST: FIPS PUB 180-4. Secure Hash Standard (SHS) (2012). http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/FIPS/NIST.FIPS.180-4.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  27. M. Bellare, R. Canetti, H. Krawczyk, Keying hash functions for message authentication, in Proceedings of Advances in Cryptology—CRYPTO96 (Springer, Berlin, 1996), pp. 1–15

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  28. M. Bellare, R. Canetti, H. Krawczyk, Message authentication using hash functions—the HMAC construction. RSA Lab. CryptoBytes 2(1), 12–15 (1996)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  29. H. Krawczyk, M. Bellare, R. Canetti, HMAC: keyed-hashing for message authentication. RFC 2104

    Google Scholar 

  30. A. Ruddick, J. Yan, Acceleration attacks on PBKDF2: or, what is inside the black-box of oclHashcat? in Proceedings of the 10th USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  31. J. Steube, Optimising computation of hash-algorithms as an attacker. https://hashcat.net/events/p13/js-ocohaaaa.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  32. NIST: FIPS PUB 198-1. The keyed-hash message authentication code (HMAC) (2008). http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips198-1/FIPS-198-1_final.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  33. Openssl, version: 1.1.0e. https://www.openssl.org/. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  34. Libgcrypt, version 1.7.6. https://www.gnupg.org/software/libgcrypt/index.html. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  35. hashcat, version 3.30. https://hashcat.net/hashcat/. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  36. OpenCL. https://www.khronos.org/opencl/. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

  37. S. Bossi, A. Visconti, What users should know about full disk encryption based on LUKS, in Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Cryptology and Network Security, CANS 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 9476 (Springer, Berlin, 2015)

    Google Scholar 

  38. C. Percival, Stronger key derivation via sequential memory-hard functions (2009). https://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/scrypt.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy

    Andrea Francesco Iuorio & Andrea Visconti

Authors
  1. Andrea Francesco Iuorio
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Andrea Visconti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Visconti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Isaac Woungang

  2. CAITFS, Department of Information Technology, Netaji Subhas University of Technology, New Delhi, India

    Sanjay Kumar Dhurandher

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Iuorio, A.F., Visconti, A. (2019). Understanding Optimizations and Measuring Performances of PBKDF2. In: Woungang, I., Dhurandher, S. (eds) 2nd International Conference on Wireless Intelligent and Distributed Environment for Communication. WIDECOM 2018. Lecture Notes on Data Engineering and Communications Technologies, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11437-4_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11437-4_8

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-11436-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11437-4

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation