Commonly Found Encrypted Password Hash And Salts

This post basically gives you a real life idea of few commonly found encrypted .so let me make you understand why this encryption is needed for the website developer? the answer is very simple its basically to make storage of your in secured format rather than storing password in clear text format it is always better to store keep it encrypted format so that nobody can easily see it
to have better idea lets discuss.

What is Hash? Types Of HASH

It is a common technique use by developer to store password in database in encrypted format so that normal person cannot see the credentials in clear text.every time when ever a user log in to authentication portal his/her password is compared with the stored hash and if it found to be valid then the user is given access to portal,if the two hashes are not the same the passwords do not match and the user is denied access.

various types of encrypted password with example

MD5 - The most common hash you will come across in the wild is an MD5 hash (Message-Digest algorithm)

Characteristics:-

They are always 32 characters in length (128 Bits)

They are always hexadecimal (Only use characters 0-9 and A-F)

Example - f5d1278e8109edd94e1e4197e04873b9

If the hash breaks one of these rules - IT IS NOT MD5.

SHA1 - Still used frequently on the internet and is one of a large family of Secure Hash Algorithms.

Characteristics:-

They are always 40 Characters in length (160 bits)

They are always hexadecimal (Only use characters 0-9 and A-F)

Example - ab4d8d2a5f480a137067da17100271cd176607a1

If the hash breaks one of these rules - IT IS NOT SHA1.

MySQL < 4.1 - These aren't used very often but still come up on very often because people have no idea what to do with them, they are used in older versions of Mysql.

Characteristics:-

They are always 16 Characters in length (64 bits)
They are always hexadecimal (Only use characters 0-9 and A-F)
If the hash breaks one of these rules - IT IS NOT MYSQL < 4.1.

Example - 606727496645bcba

MYSQL5 - Used in newer versions of MYSQL to store database user passwords.

Characteristics:-

They are always 41 characters in length
They are always capitalized
They always begin with an asterisk
If the hash breaks one of these rules - IT IS NOT MYSQL5.

Example - *C8EB599B8E8EE7BE9F1A5691B7BC9ECCB8DE1C75

MD5(Wordpress) - Used in word press driven sites, one of the most commonly confused hashes by everyone

Characteristics:-

They always start with $P$
They are always variable case alpha numeric (0-9 A-Z a-z)
The are always 34 characters long

If the hash breaks one of these rules - IT IS NOT MD5(Wordpress).

Example - $P$9QGUsR07ob2qNMbmSCRh3Moi6ehJZR1

MD5(phpBB3) - Used in PHPBB forums, another commonly miss identified hash, especially amongst skids.

Characteristics:-

They always start with $H$
They are always variable case alpha numeric (0-9 A-Z a-z)
The are always 34 characters long
If the hash breaks one of these rules - IT IS NOT MD5(PhpBB).

Example - $H$9xAbu5SruQM5WvBldAnS46kQMEw2EQ0

What is SALTS? Types of Salts

The most commonly salted hash is MD5 because it is cryptographically weak and easy to crack. So a salt gets added to the password before hashing to increase the parity. For example MD5($password.$salt).

Salted MD5 - Used in a large amount of applications to increase hash parity and to increase the time it takes to crack.

Characteristics:-

They consist of two blocks connected by a colon, the first is the hash the second is the salt.
The first part of the salted hash is hexadecimal, the second is variable case alphanumeric.
They first part will always be 32 characters long
The second part can be any length.
If the hash breaks one of these rules - IT IS NOT A SALTED MD5.

Example - 49adee90123f8c77d9020bba968c34dd:PS2en

Warning - in some cases the salt can contain symbols (but this is rare)

NOTE - You need both the salt AND the hash to decrypt a salted md5.

Cracking these Encryption

This what a hacker always look for after getting the password from database through sql injection /other web vulnerability.
There are various online as well as offline tools are available for cracking any encrypted password so that i will put in my next post keep visiting have a racking time ahead :).