The usual advice on how to store passwords securely is "use bcrypt", but since there seem to be no Haskell bindings for bcrypt, the other good option is to iterate a salted hash function at least 1000 times. In order for people to get this right, there should be a library with a really simple API that makes it Just Work. I think I have such an API, but I'd like to hear if anybody else has suggestions before I go releasing it onto Hackage. The code is here:<div>
<br></div><div><a href="https://github.com/PeterScott/pwstore">https://github.com/PeterScott/pwstore</a></div><div><br></div><div>The part of the API that people have to care about is two functions. makePassword creates a hashed, salted password that you can store in a database. verifyPassword takes this hashed, salted password and a user's password input, and tells you if it matches. Like this:</div>
<div><br></div><div><div><div> >>> makePassword (B.pack "hunter2") 12</div><div> "sha256|12|lMzlNz0XK9eiPIYPY96QCQ==|1ZJ/R3qLEF0oCBVNtvNKLwZLpXPM7bLEy/Nc6QBxWro="</div><div> </div><div>
>>> verifyPassword (B.pack "wrong guess") passwordHash</div><div> False</div><div> >>> verifyPassword (B.pack "hunter2") passwordHash</div><div> True</div></div></div><div>
<br></div><div>There's also a function for increasing the number of hash iterations on stored password hashes, to compensate for Moore's law.</div><div><br></div><div>Does this sound reasonable? Also, I have a pure-Haskell version and a version which depends on some C code, for speed (about 25x difference). Does anybody care about the pure Haskell version, or should I just drop it and require the faster C/Haskell mixed version?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div>-Peter</div>