Yescrypt

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yescrypt is a cryptographic key derivation function function used for password hashing on Fedora Linux, [1] Debian, [2] Ubuntu, [3] and Arch Linux. [4] The function is more resistant to offline password-cracking attacks than SHA-512. [5] It is based on Scrypt. [5]

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Yescrypt is a scalable, password-hashing function and a key-derivation function (KDF) designed by Alexander Peslyak, also known as Solar Designer, to be highly resistant to hardware-accelerated brute-force attacks. As an evolution of the scrypt algorithm, it introduces enhanced memory-hardness and "strongly sequential" processing, which effectively thwarts large-scale cracking attempts using GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs. By requiring a substantial amount of RAM to compute a single hash, it forces attackers to use traditional, memory-expensive computing methods rather than parallelized hardware. Due to its robust security profile and ability to scale with modern hardware advancements, it has been adopted as the default password-hashing scheme for several major Linux distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora, where it is identifiable in the /etc/shadow file by the $y$ prefix.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Changes/yescrypt as default hashing method for shadow" . Retrieved 2023-10-10.
  2. ↑ "Chapter 5. Issues to be aware of for bullseye" . Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  3. ↑ "yescript replaces sha512 for password hashing" . Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  4. ↑ "Arch Linux - Changes to default password hashing algorithm and umask settings" . Retrieved 2023-10-10.
  5. 1 2 "yescrypt" . Retrieved 2023-10-10.


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