How do I generate a SALT in Java for Salted-Hash?

Question

I've been looking around and the closest answer is : How to generate a random alpha-numeric string?

I want to follow this workflow according to this CrackStation tutorial:

To Store a Password

1. Generate a long random salt using a CSPRNG.

2. Prepend the salt to the password and hash it with a standard cryptographic hash function such as SHA256.

3. Save both the salt and the hash in the user's database record.

To Validate a Password

1. Retrieve the user's salt and hash from the database.

2. Prepend the salt to the given password and hash it using the same hash function.

3. Compare the hash of the given password with the hash from the database. If they match, the password is correct. Otherwise, the password is incorrect.

I don't know how to generate a SALT. I figured out how to generate a hash using the MessageDigest. I tried using SecureRandom but nextByte method produces garbled code.

Edit: I don't know which answer to choose, they're too complicated for me, I have decided to use jBCrypt; jBCript is easy to use, does all the complex stuff behind the scenes. so I'll let the community vote up for the best answer.

Answer 1

Inspired from this post and that post, I use this code to generate and verify hashed salted passwords. It only uses JDK provided classes, no external dependency.

The process is:

• you create a salt with getNextSalt
• you ask the user his password and use the hash method to generate a salted and hashed password. The method returns a byte[] which you can save as is in a database with the salt
• to authenticate a user, you ask his password, retrieve the salt and hashed password from the database and use the isExpectedPassword method to check that the details match

/**
 * A utility class to hash passwords and check passwords vs hashed values. It uses a combination of hashing and unique
 * salt. The algorithm used is PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1 which, although not the best for hashing password (vs. bcrypt) is
 * still considered robust and <a href="https://security.stackexchange.com/a/6415/12614"> recommended by NIST </a>.
 * The hashed value has 256 bits.
 */
public class Passwords {

  private static final Random RANDOM = new SecureRandom();
  private static final int ITERATIONS = 10000;
  private static final int KEY_LENGTH = 256;

  /**
   * static utility class
   */
  private Passwords() { }

  /**
   * Returns a random salt to be used to hash a password.
   *
   * @return a 16 bytes random salt
   */
  public static byte[] getNextSalt() {
    byte[] salt = new byte[16];
    RANDOM.nextBytes(salt);
    return salt;
  }

  /**
   * Returns a salted and hashed password using the provided hash.<br>
   * Note - side effect: the password is destroyed (the char[] is filled with zeros)
   *
   * @param password the password to be hashed
   * @param salt     a 16 bytes salt, ideally obtained with the getNextSalt method
   *
   * @return the hashed password with a pinch of salt
   */
  public static byte[] hash(char[] password, byte[] salt) {
    PBEKeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec(password, salt, ITERATIONS, KEY_LENGTH);
    Arrays.fill(password, Character.MIN_VALUE);
    try {
      SecretKeyFactory skf = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1");
      return skf.generateSecret(spec).getEncoded();
    } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException | InvalidKeySpecException e) {
      throw new AssertionError("Error while hashing a password: " + e.getMessage(), e);
    } finally {
      spec.clearPassword();
    }
  }

  /**
   * Returns true if the given password and salt match the hashed value, false otherwise.<br>
   * Note - side effect: the password is destroyed (the char[] is filled with zeros)
   *
   * @param password     the password to check
   * @param salt         the salt used to hash the password
   * @param expectedHash the expected hashed value of the password
   *
   * @return true if the given password and salt match the hashed value, false otherwise
   */
  public static boolean isExpectedPassword(char[] password, byte[] salt, byte[] expectedHash) {
    byte[] pwdHash = hash(password, salt);
    Arrays.fill(password, Character.MIN_VALUE);
    if (pwdHash.length != expectedHash.length) return false;
    for (int i = 0; i < pwdHash.length; i++) {
      if (pwdHash[i] != expectedHash[i]) return false;
    }
    return true;
  }

  /**
   * Generates a random password of a given length, using letters and digits.
   *
   * @param length the length of the password
   *
   * @return a random password
   */
  public static String generateRandomPassword(int length) {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(length);
    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
      int c = RANDOM.nextInt(62);
      if (c <= 9) {
        sb.append(String.valueOf(c));
      } else if (c < 36) {
        sb.append((char) ('a' + c - 10));
      } else {
        sb.append((char) ('A' + c - 36));
      }
    }
    return sb.toString();
  }
}