How to hash passwords with a salt in .NET

October 26, 2017 2 Comments

In this post we learnt about using hashing in .NET. We also saw one of its basic functions in the same post which is message verification. In this post we saw how hashing coupled with a random key can be used for message authentication.

We also mentioned another common usage of hashing which is password storage. A password should never be stored as clear text in your system. Instead we save its hash value and when a user enters a password in a login field then we compare the hashed values instead of the plain string passwords. However, a simple one-way hash is generally still not good enough.

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Using HMACs to authenticate a hash in .NET

October 25, 2017 Leave a comment

In this post we learnt about using hashing in .NET. Hashes provide a one-way encryption of a message where the hash value ideally cannot be “unhashed”, i.e. we cannot build the original string from it. A hash or message digest helps us verify whether the message has been tampered with by a third party after it was sent to us.

We can take a step further and add an extra layer of security on our hashes. After all a message and its hash could originate from anyone. How can we verify the authenticity of the message as well? That’s where Hashed Message Authentication Codes, also called HashMACs or HMACs enter the picture.

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Hashing messages using various hash algorithms in .NET

October 24, 2017 Leave a comment

A hash of a message can be viewed as its unique identifier. A series of bytes, such as a string, can be converted into hash, also called a message digest. A message digest is also a byte array that can be converted into a base 64 string for better readability. There are various hashing algorithms out there that can calculate the hash of a message. Ideally each algorithm should produce a different digest for each message, i.e. “Hello world” should yield a different hash from what “H3llo world” produces. I.e. a single change in the byte sequence will change the resulting hash. Also, it should be impossible to calculate the original message from a hash. Therefore hashing is a one-way cryptographic operation.

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How to store the asymmetric keys in the Windows key store with C#

October 23, 2017 Leave a comment

Introduction

In this post we briefly looked through asymmetric encryption in .NET. This encryption type requires two keys as opposed to symmetric encryption where the same key is used for encryption and decryption. In asymmetric encryption we have a public and a private key. The public key can be distributed so that other people can encrypt their messages to us. Then we use our private key to decrypt the ciphertext and read the original message. Therefore we don’t have to worry about the public key getting into the wrong hands. On the other hand asymmetric encryption is significantly slower than symmetric encryption due to the higher mathematical complexity.

In the post referenced above we saw how to store the asymmetric key-pair in an XML string. You can save this string in a file or database for later retrieval. There’s at least one more option for storage which is the cryptographic key store on Windows. We’ll go through how to use it in this post.

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Overview of asymmetric encryption in .NET

October 22, 2017 Leave a comment

Introduction

Asymmetric encryption is based on a pair of cryptographic keys. One of the keys is public, i.e. anyone can have access to it. The other key is private which should be kept secret. The keys are complementary which means that they go hand in hand, they are not independent of each other. If a value is calculated as the public key then the private key cannot be calculated independently otherwise the encryption process will fail. Normally the public key is used to encrypt a message and the private key is there for the decryption process but they can be used in the opposite direction as well. Asymmetric algorithms are also called Public Key Cryptography.

The most important advantage of asymmetric over symmetric encryption is that we don’t need to worry about distributing the public key. The key used in symmetric encryption must be known to all parties taking part in the encryption/decryption process which increases the chances of the key landing in the wrong hands. With asymmetric encryption we only need to worry about storing the private key, the public key can be freely distributed. For a hacker it is not practical to attempt to calculate the private key based on the public key, that is close to impossible to achieve.

However, asymmetric encryption is a very complex mathematical process which is a lot slower than symmetric encryption. Also, storing the private key can still be problematic.

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Overview of symmetric encryption in .NET

October 21, 2017 1 Comment

Introduction

A symmetric encryption algorithm is one where the cryptographic key is the same for both encryption and decryption and is shared among the parties involved in the process.

Ideally only a small group of reliable people should have access to this key. Attackers decipher an encrypted message rather than trying to defeat the algorithm itself. The key can vary in size so the attacker will need to know this first. Once they know this then they will try combinations of possible key characters.

A clear disadvantage with this approach is that distributing and storing keys in a safe and reliable manner is difficult. On the other hand symmetric algorithms are fast.

In this short overview we’ll look at the symmetric encryption algorithms currently supported in .NET.

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An overview of digital signatures in .NET

October 11, 2017 Leave a comment

Introduction

A digital signature in software has about the same role as a real signature on a document. It proves that a certain person has signed the document thereby authenticating it. A signature increases security around a document for both parties involved, i.e. the one who signed the document – the signee – and the one that uses the document afterwards. The one who signed can claim that the document belongs to them, i.e. it originates from them and cannot be used by another person. If you sign a bank loan request then you should receive the loan and not someone else. Also, the party that takes the document for further processing can be sure that it really originates from the person who signed it. The signee cannot claim that the signature belongs to some other person and they have nothing to do with the document. This latter is called non-repudiation. The signee cannot deny that the document originates from him or her.

Digital signatures in software are used to enhance messaging security. The receiver must be able to know for sure that the message originated with one specific sender and that the sender cannot claim that it was someone else who sent the message. While it is quite possible to copy someone’s signature on a paper document it is much harder to forge a strong digital signature.

In this post we’ll review how digital signatures are implemented in .NET

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Hashing passwords with a password based key derivation function in .NET

July 27, 2017 Leave a comment

In this post we saw a basic hashing technique using a password and a salt. We added an extra random set of bytes to the password and hashed the combined byte array instead of just the password bytes. We can store the salt along with the hash in our database. The main purpose of adding a salt to the password is to increase its entropy which more or less means randomness.

Hashing the password with an extra salt like that may still not be as secure as we think it is. The processing power of today’s fast computers and the increasing size of available rainbow tables keep pushing the limits of what’s available to crack with brute force attacks. One way to increase the difficulty of cracking a password is to keep hashing its hash in an iterative manner. Password-based key derivation functions help us achieve that and we’ll see an example of their usage in this post.

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Generate truly random cryptographic keys using a random number generator in .NET

December 18, 2016 1 Comment

The well-known System.Random class lets us generate random numbers quickly. However, the values provided by System.Random are not truly random. Instead, they are pseudo-random. The return values should only be used in case true randomness is not that important, such as in the classic number-guessing game. In case you need a random value to be used in cryptography such as a cryptographic key in symmetric and asymmetric encryption then System.Random is not an acceptable option.

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How to calculate the message digest in Java

December 10, 2016 Leave a comment

A message digest is an important concept in cryptography. A digest is an array of bytes created by a hashing formula. It is used to make sure that some digital information has not been tampered with. In a sense it is a footprint of an object, such as a file. If someone modifies the file then the footprint also changes. Then we know that the file has been changed. Another word for a message digest is checksum. There are various hashing algorithms to perform the calculation. SHA-256 and MD5 are the most common ones.

For an example you can check out the Apacha log4j2 download page here. You’ll see a column called “checksum” for various files. If you click on one of those you’ll see the MD5 hash of the file in a relatively human readable form, such as “31826c19fff94790957d798cb1caf29a”.

Java and other popular programming languages have built-in classes to construct a message digest. Let’s see an example from Java.

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