Question about PBKDF salts and cryptographically secure randomness

mirkaim

10/21/23, 9:32 PM

I have seen a few answers here and elsewhere that say a salt doesn't need to be cryptographically secure randomness but rather just unique since they are stored in the open anyway. I am working on an implementation of PBKDF2 and AES-CBC and reading NIST SP 800-132 Recommendation for Password-Based Key Derivation from 2010, it states in section 5 regarding salts:

All or a portion of the salt shall be generated using an approved Random Bit Generator (e.g., see [5]). The length of the randomly-generated portion of the salt shall be at least 128 bits.

I don't personally care whether it needs excellent randomness or not but I just want to get it cleared up for my own sake whether the NIST recommendation contradicts that salts don't need to be cryptographically secure.

1 + 0

salt

pbkdf-2

pbkdf

Score:1

Crypto

samuel-lucas6

10/22/23, 4:54 PM

In cryptography books, a salt is defined as a random value, but it technically only needs to be unique. See, for instance, the Argon2 RFC:

The salt SHOULD be unique for each password.

The reason CSPRNGs are used is because they generate unique values with negligible chance of collision if you request a large enough output (e.g. 128 bits). By contrast, regular PRNGs and other strategies (e.g. a username or full name) may be predictable and/or lead to repetition.

Therefore, if you want to randomly generate salts, they should be cryptographically secure. If you can't use random salts (e.g. a deterministic password manager), a non-cryptographically secure salt is fine as long as it's unique.

+ 2

mirkaim

10/24/23, 12:42 AM

Thanks for the answer. I will take this that salts don't need to be cryptographically secure.

samuel-lucas6

10/24/23, 7:41 AM

That's correct, although you should use a CSPRNG for random salts. I will clarify my answer slightly.

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