I have used unsalted md5/sha1 for long time, but as this method isn't really secure (and is getting even less secure as time goes by) I decided to switch to a salted sha512. Furthermore I want to slow the generation of the hash down by using many iterations (e.g. 100).
My question is whether I should append the salt on every iteration or only once at the beginning. Here are the two possible codes:
Append every time:
// some nice big salt
$salt = hash($algorithm, $salt);
// apply $algorithm $runs times for slowdown
while ($runs--) {
$string = hash($algorithm, $string . $salt, $raw);
}
return $string;
Append once:
// add some nice big salt
$string .= hash($algorithm, $salt);
// apply $algorithm $runs times for slowdown
while ($runs--) {
$string = hash($algorithm, $string, $raw);
}
return $string;
I first wanted to use the second version (append once) but then found some scripts appending the salt every time.
So, I wonder whether adding it every time adds some strength to the hash. For example, would it be possible that an attacker found some clever way to create a 100timesSha512 function which were way faster than simply executing sha512 100 times?