Choosing Parameters

Finding the right parameters for a password hashing algorithm is a daunting task. The authors of Argon2 specified a method in their paper but it should be noted that they also mention that no value for time_cost or memory_cost is actually insecure (cf. section 6.4).

1. Choose whether you want Argon2i or Argon2d (type). If you don’t know what that means, choose Argon2i (argon2.Type.I).
2. Figure out how many threads can be used on each call to Argon2 (parallelism). They recommend twice as many as the number of cores dedicated to hashing passwords.
3. Figure out how much memory each call can afford (memory_cost).
4. Choose a salt length. 16 Bytes are fine.
5. Choose a hash length (hash_len). 16 Bytes are fine.
6. Figure out how long each call can take. One recommendation for concurent user logins is to keep it under 0.5ms.
7. Measure the time for hashing using your chosen parameters. Find a time_cost that is within your accounted time. If time_cost=1 takes too long, lower memory_cost.

argon2_cffi’s CLI will help you with this process.