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Python A Social Network with Flask Making Strong Users Cryptographic Hashing with Flask-Bcrypt

tariqasghar
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tariqasghar
UX Design Techdegree Graduate 30,519 Points
Posted by tariqasghar
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tariqasghar
UX Design Techdegree Graduate 30,519 Points

How is check password able to return True?

Isn't "check password hash" function doing the same thing as before i.e. comparing both arguments passed?

1 Answer

Jeff Muday
MOD
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,720 Points
Jeff Muday
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,720 Points

That is a smart observation. If we simply hashed the password, you would be correct.

But the generate_password_hash() hashes the password first and then applies a "random" salt.

In some schemes, the salt is stored alongside the hash but in this case, it is randomly generated (this is the "rounds" parameter Kenneth mentions) and combined with the password. When we use check_password_hash() the function takes a password candidate and compares it to the hashed password in the database and tries a number of possible candidate salt combinations.

The combination of password hashing and salting makes dictionary (or rainbow) attacks less likely to succeed.