The Password Hashing Competition was an open competition announced in 2013 to select one or more password hash functions that can be recognized as a recommended standard. It was modeled after the successful

Advanced Encryption Standard process The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the symmetric block cipher ratified as a standard by National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States (NIST), was chosen using a process lasting from 1997 to 2000 that was markedly more ...

and

NIST hash function competition The NIST hash function competition was an open competition held by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop a new hash function called SHA-3 to complement the older SHA-1 and SHA-2. The competition was formally ann ...

, but directly organized by cryptographers and security practitioners. On 20 July 2015,

Argon2 Argon2 is a key derivation function that was selected as the winner of the 2015 Password Hashing Competition. It was designed by Alex Biryukov, Daniel Dinu, and Dmitry Khovratovich from the University of Luxembourg. The reference implementation ...

was selected as the final PHC winner, with special recognition given to four other password hashing schemes:

Catena Catena (Latin for chain) or catenae (plural) may refer to: Science * ''Catena'' (fly), a genus in the family Tachinidae *Catena (linguistics) is a unit of syntax and morphology, closely associated with dependency grammars * Catena (computing), nu ...

Lyra2 Lyra2 is a password hashing scheme (PHS) that can also work as a key derivation function (KDF). It received a special recognition during the Password Hashing Competition in July 2015, which was won by Argon2. Besides being used for its original pu ...

yescrypt The Password Hashing Competition was an open competition announced in 2013 to select one or more password hash functions that can be recognized as a recommended standard. It was modeled after the successful Advanced Encryption Standard process and ...

and Makwa. One goal of the Password Hashing Competition was to raise awareness of the need for strong password hash algorithms, hopefully avoiding a repeat of previous password breaches involving weak or no hashing, such as the ones involving

RockYou RockYou was a company that developed widgets for MySpace and implemented applications for various social networks and Facebook. Since 2014, it has engaged primarily in the purchases of rights to classic video games; it incorporates in-game ads an ...

(2009), JIRA,

Gawker ''Gawker'' is an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in ...

(2010),

PlayStation Network outage The 2011 PlayStation Network outage (sometimes referred to as the PSN Hack) was the result of an " external intrusion" on Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, in which personal details from approximately 77 million accounts were compr ...

Battlefield Heroes ''Battlefield Heroes'' was a 2009 third-person shooter video game developed by DICE initially and further developed by Easy Studios, published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows. ''Battlefield Heroes'' was a third-person, free-to-play s ...

(2011),

eHarmony Eharmony (styled eHarmony) is an online dating website launched in 2000. eHarmony is based in Los Angeles, California, and owned by Nucom ecommerce, a joint venture of German mass media company ProSiebenSat.1 Media and American private equity ...

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

, ASUS,

South Carolina Department of Revenue The Department of Revenue is a department of the South Carolina state government responsible for the administration of 32 different state taxes in South Carolina. The Department is responsible for licensing and taxing all manufacturers, wholesale ...

(2012),

Evernote Evernote is a note-taking and task management application. It is developed by the Evernote Corporation, headquartered in Redwood City, California. It is intended for archiving and creating notes in which photos, audio and saved web content can ...

Ubuntu Forums __NOTOC__ The Ubuntu Forums is the official forum for the Ubuntu operating system. As of May 2022, The Ubuntu Forums has 2.1 million registered members and more than 2.2 million threads. The Ubuntu Forums currently runs on the forum software vBul ...

(2013), etc. Danielle Walker
"Black Hat: Crackable algorithms prompt need for improved password hashing"
2013. Antone Gonsalves
"Password hashing competition aims to beef up security"
2013. Antone Gonsalves
"Contest aims to boost state of password encryption"
2013. Jean-Philippe Aumasson
"The Password Hashing Competition: Motivation, Challenges, and Organization"
2013. The organizers were in contact with NIST, expecting an impact on its recommendations. Dennis Fisher
"Cryptographers aim to find new password hashing algorithm"
2013.

References

External links

The Password Hashing Competition web site

Source code and descriptions of the first round submissions

PHC string format
Computer science competitions History of cryptography Password authentication Cryptography contests {{crypto-stub

See also

References

External links