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8.0

Salt values prevent dictionary password attacks?

Asked by solution46 in Programming for ASP.NET

Tags: password, salt, attack, prevent, value

Hi,

I am working on a web app with an ASP.NET front end (forms authentication), a VB.NET COM layer and a SQL Server database. I am storing the password as an MD5 hash value, then re-computing the value each time the user logs in. So far this is working fine, but I have been reading that it is better to add a random salt value to the end of the password, and store this in the user table for use when re-computing the password hash (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetsec/html/SecNetHT03.asp for example). Apparently this helps against dictionary attacks but I cannot see how. My view is that a dictionary attack through the front end wont be affected as the salt value wil be appended to each password tried, and if anybody has access to the back end they can read the salt value for themselves.

Full marks for the first person who gives an unequivocal reason why I should use a salt value as described in the above link.

s46.
 
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Zone: Programming for ASP.NET
Tags: password, salt, attack, prevent, value
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Solution Provided By: NeedPoints
Participating Experts: 1
Solution Grade: A
 
[+][-]06/27/05 07:19 AM, ID: 14308850Author Comment

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