⌗Password Hashing & Key Derivation Functions

Password hashing functions are deliberately slow, salted and — in modern designs — memory-hard, so that a stolen password database can't be cracked at the billions of guesses per second a GPU manages against plain SHA-256. Key derivation functions use the same idea to turn a human password into a strong encryption key.

Argon2id is the current recommendation for new systems (OWASP minimum: 19 MiB memory, 2 iterations). bcrypt remains a sound, universally supported choice at cost 10–12, with the caveat that it ignores input beyond 72 bytes. scrypt is a mature memory-hard alternative, and PBKDF2 is the option when FIPS-140 compliance is required. NTLM, Cisco Type 7 and APR1 are here for auditing and interoperating with legacy systems — they are weak and should not be chosen for anything new.