Enhancing the resistance of password hashing using binary randomization through logical gates

Abstract

Digitalization in various sectors makes information security issues very crucial. Information security follows the authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) principle, where one of the most important parts is authentication. The most widely used authentication method is username-password. The best method to secure a user-pass is to convert the plaintext using a hash so that the converted plaintext cannot be recovered. However, with higher technology, hackers can crack the ciphertext using brute force. This research proposes a username-password scrambling algorithm before it is fed into the hash function to improve resilience from attacks. This algorithm is named logical gates (LG). It works by converting the user pass into binary form, adding salt, and scrambling it with certain logical gates before inserting it into the hash function. Testing is divided into two: time of execution and attack resistance. Time of execution results show that LG takes 0.0443432033 s, while without LG takes 0.01403197646 s. The resistance of attack results show that the plaintext of the hash amplified by LG cannot be cracked at all and increases the attack time by 321.3% at prefix and 161.3% at postfix, while without LG, the plain text can be found for a certain duration of time.