hash - Best practice for hashing passwords - SHA256 or SHA512?

Question

I am currently using SHA256 with a salt to hash my passwords. Is it better to continue using SHA256 or should I change to SHA512?

Answer 1

Switching to SHA512 will hardly make your website more secure. You should not write your own password hashing function. Instead, use an existing implementation.

SHA256 and SHA512 are message digests, they were never meant to be password-hashing (or key-derivation) functions. (Although a message digest could be used a building block for a KDF, such as in PBKDF2 with HMAC-SHA256.)

A password-hashing function should defend against dictionary attacks and rainbow tables. In order to defend against dictionary attacks, a password hashing scheme must include a work factor to make it as slow as is workable.

Currently, the best choice is probably Argon2. This family of password hashing functions won the Password Hashing Competition in 2015.

If Argon2 is not available, the only other standardized password-hashing or key-derivation function is PBKDF2, which is an oldish NIST standard. Other choices, if using a standard is not required, include bcrypt and scrypt.

Wikipedia has pages for these functions:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon2
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrypt
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2

EDIT: NIST does not recommend using message digests such as SHA2 or SHA3 directly to hash passwords! Here is what NIST recommends:

Memorized secrets SHALL be salted and hashed using a suitable one-way key derivation function. Key derivation functions take a password, a salt, and a cost factor as inputs then generate a password hash. Their purpose is to make each password guessing trial by an attacker who has obtained a password hash file expensive and therefore the cost of a guessing attack high or prohibitive. Examples of suitable key derivation functions include Password-based Key Derivation Function 2 (PBKDF2) [SP 800-132] and Balloon [BALLOON].