First draft.
Following best practices when hashing and storing passwords and other authenticator secrets impacts a great deal more than just a users identity. It also effects usability, and backwards compatibility by determining what authentication and authorization mechanisms can be used. Unfortunately, aside from mandating the use of SCRAM-SHA-1 in &rfc6120;, and recommending at least 4096 rounds of PBKDF2 in &rfc5802; (a number which is now woefully inadequate), no general recommendations for best practices in password storage, transmission, or key derivation function tuning exist in the XMPP ecosystem.
Many of the recommendations in this document were taken from &nistsp800-63b; and &nistsp800-132;.
This document makes specific recommendations for best practices on the public Jabber network for both clients and servers. It does not attempt to address private networks or proprietary services which may have different requirements, use cases, and security models. These recommendations include the hashing and storage of memorized secrets and other authenticators, authentication, and compatibility between clients and servers with respect to authentication.
To keep the length of this document manageable, we assume basic familiarity with password storage and handling, common terms, and cryptographic operations. For an overview of basic password security see the &owasppasswords; maintained by &OWASP;.
Many terms used in this document are defined in &nistsp800-63-3; Appendix A.1 and in &nistsp800-132; §3.1. Throughout this document the term "password" is used to mean any password, passphrase, PIN, or other memorized secret.
Clients and servers must already implement the SASL mechanisms listed in RFC 6120 §13.8.1 For Authentication Only. These mechanisms are:
In addition, clients and servers SHOULD support the following SCRAM variants defined in &rfc7677;:
Clients SHOULD NOT invent their own mechanisms that have not been standardized by the IETF, the XSF, or another reputable standards body.
Clients MUST NOT implement any mechanism with a usage status of "OBSOLETE", "MUST NOT be used", or "LIMITED" in the &ianasasl;. Similarly, any mechanism that depends on a hash function listed as "MUST NOT" in &xep0414; MUST NOT be used. This means that the following mechanisms which were commonly used with XMPP in the past MUST NOT be supported:
Clients maintain a list of preferred SASL mechanisms, generally ordered by perceived strength to enable strong authentication (RFC 6120 §6.3.3 Mechanism Preferences). To prevent downgrade attacks by a malicious actor that has successfully man in the middled a connection, or compromised a trusted server's configuration, clients SHOULD implement "mechanism pinning". That is, after the first successful authentication with a strong mechanism, clients SHOULD make a record of the authentication and thereafter only advertise and use mechanisms of equal or higher perceived strength.
For reference, the following mechanisms are ordered by their perceived strength from strongest to weakest with mechanisms of equal strength on the same line. This list is a non-normative example and does not indicate that these mechanisms should or should not be supported:
Clients SHOULD always store authenticators in a trusted and encrypted keystore such as the system keystore, or an encrypted store created specifically for the clients use. They SHOULD NOT store authenticators as plain text.
If clients know that they will only ever authenticate using a mechanism such as SCRAM where the original password is not needed (for example if the mechanism has been pinned) they SHOULD store the SCRAM bits or the hashed and salted password instead of the original password. However, if backwards compatibility with servers that only support the PLAIN mechanism or other mechanisms that require using the original password is required, clients MAY choose to store the original password so long as an appropriate keystore is used.
Servers MUST NOT support any mechanism that would require authenticators to be stored in such a way that they could be recovered in plain text from the stored information. This includes mechanisms that store authenticators using reversable encryption, obsolete hashing mechanisms such as MD5, and hashes that are unsuitable for use with authenticators such as SHA256.
Servers MUST always store passwords only after they have been salted and hashed. If multiple hashes are supported for use with SCRAM, for example SCRAM-SHA-1 and SCRAM-SHA-256, separate salted and hashed passwords SHOULD be calculated and stored for each mechanism so that users can log in with multiple clients that support only some of the mechanisms.
A distinct salt SHOULD be used for each user, and each SCRAM family supported. Salts MUST be generated using a cryptographically secure random number generator. The salt MAY be stored in the same datastore as the password. If it is stored alongside the password, it SHOULD be combined with a pepper stored in the application configuration, an environment variable, or some other location other than the datastore containing the salts.
When authenticating using PLAIN or similar mechanisms that involve transmitting the original password to the server the password MUST be hashed and compared against the salted and hashed password in the database using a constant time comparison.
Each time a password is changed or reset, a new random salt should be created and the iteration count and pepper (if applicable) should be updated to the latest value required by server policy.
If a pepper is used, consideration should be taken to ensure that it can be easily rotated. For example, multiple peppers could be stored with new passwords and reset passwords using the latest pepper. A hash of the pepper using a cryptographically secure hash function such as SHA256 could then be stored in the database next to the salt so that future logins can identify which pepper in the list was used. This is just one example, pepper rotation schemes are outside the scope of this document.
Because the PBKDF2 key derivation function (&rfc8018;) is used by SCRAM-SHA-1 which is mandated for use in XMPP, this document recommends it for password storage. Servers SHOULD use the following parameters when applying PBKDF2:
The minimum iteration count may be tuned to the specific system on which password hashing is taking place.
Clients and servers SHOULD enforce a minimum length of 8 characters for user passwords. If using a mechanism such as PLAIN where the server performs hashing on the original password, a maximum length between 64 and 128 characters MAY be imposed to prevent denial of service (DoS) attacks. Passwords SHOULD be required to conform to the Opaque String profile of &rfc8265;. No other password restrictions should be applied.
The SCRAM suite of SASL mechanisms are recommended in this document, however, there is currently no way to force a password reset. This reduces upgrade agility if a weakness is discovered in SCRAM and means that new, untested, SCRAM-based or SCRAM-like mechanisms should be added with caution.
This document mentions many hash functions that are already in use in the XMPP ecosystem, or that have been used in the past. It does not make recommendations for what functions should or should not be used in new applications. For recommendations about the use of hash functions and their security implications, see &xep0414;
This document contains recommendations that are likely to change over time. It should be reviewed yearly to ensure that it remains accurate and up to date. Many of the recommendations in this document were taken from the &owasppasswords;, which can be used as a reference when making updates.
This document requires no interaction with &IANA;.
No namespaces or parameters need to be registered with the ®ISTRAR; as a result of this document.