GSoC 2019 Report: Incorporating the memory-hard Argon2 hashing scheme into NetBSD

Argon2 is a modern memory-hard hashing scheme designed by Biryukov et al.[1] Compared to currently supported hashing algorithms in NetBSD, memory-hard Argon2 provides improved resistance against Time Memory Trade-off (TMTO) and side-channel attacks. In our project, we are working to incorporate Argon2 into the local password management framework of NetBSD.

Phase 1 goals and work completed

Phase 1 of the project focused on incorporating the Argon2 reference implementation into NetBSD. As such, we focused on building the associated libraries and integrating the functionality into the existing password management framework. Our initial phase 1 goals were as follows

• Integrate Argon2 reference code into the existing build framework
• Support automated building and installation of argon2 binary and libraries
• Extend the existing password management framework to support Argon2 encoding

Towards these goals, we have added the Argon2 reference code into the external source tree and created the necessary build scripts. This work allows us to successfully add Argon2 into our system by adding MKARGON2=yes to /usr/share/mk/bsd.own.mk. After successfully building and installation, we have the following

/usr/bin/argon2
/lib/libargon2.so     
/lib/libargon2.so.1   
/lib/libargon2.so.1.0

We then extended the functionality of pwhash(1) and libcrypt(3) to support Argon2 encoding. Currently we support all three Argon2 variants, although not all variants are recommended (see [1][2]). We support the following standard parameters: execution time (t), memory utiltized (m), and degree of parallelism (p). Salt length is currently fixed at the recommended 16 bytes.[1]

With our phase 1 goals successfully completed, we have the following functionality available. The argon2(1) binary allows us to easily validate parameters and encodings

m2# echo -n password|argon2 somesalt -id -p 3 -m 8
Type:           Argon2id
Iterations:     3
Memory:         256 KiB
Parallelism:    3
Hash:           97f773f68715d27272490d3d2e74a2a9b06a5bca759b71eab7c02be8a453bfb9
Encoded:        $argon2id$v=19$m=256,t=3,p=3$c29tZXNhbHQ$l/dz9ocV0nJySQ09LnSiqbBqW8p1m3Hqt8Ar6KRTv7k
0.000 seconds
Verification ok

m2# pwhash -A argon2id password
$argon2id$v=19$m=4096,t=3,p=1$.SJJCiU575MDnA8s$+pjT4JsF2eLNQuLPEyhRA5LCFGQWAKsksIPl5ewTWNY

m2# pwhash -Aargon2id,p=3,m=8192  password 
$argon2id$v=19$m=8192,t=3,p=3$gGs/lLnXIESuSl4H$fGuqUn2PeNeoCFqV3ASvNdkXLZ2A1wZTb2s7LTe4SE0

m1# grep -A1 testuser /etc/passwd.conf 
testuser:
        localcipher = argon2i,t=6,m=4096,p=1

m1# id testuser 
uid=1001(testuser) gid=100(users) groups=100(users)

m1# grep testuser /etc/master.passwd                                                                                          
testuser:$argon2i$v=19$m=4096,t=6,p=1$MpbO25MF2m4Y/aQT$9STuNmQLMSgYBVoQiXyDLGcb+DSHysJOQh1spI6qEuE:1001:100::0:0::/home/testuser:/sbin/nologin

m1# passwd testuser
Changing password for testuser.
New Password:
Retype New Password:

m1# grep testuser /etc/master.passwd  
testuser:$argon2i$v=19$m=4096,t=6,p=1$PDd65qr6JU0Pfnpr$8YOMYcwINuKHoxIV8Q0FJHG+RP82xtmAuGep26brilU:1001:100::0:0::/home/testuser:/sbin/nologin

Plans for next phase

Summary

References