What is Argon2?#
Note
TL;DR: Use argon2.PasswordHasher with its default parameters to securely hash your passwords.
You do not need to read or understand anything below this box.
Argon2 is a secure password hashing algorithm. It is designed to have both a configurable runtime as well as memory consumption.
This means that you can decide how long it takes to hash a password and how much memory is required.
In September 2021, Argon2 has been standardized by the IETF in RFC 9106.
Argon2 comes in three variants: Argon2d, Argon2i, and Argon2id. Argon2d’s strength is the resistance against time–memory trade-offs, while Argon2i’s focus is on resistance against side-channel attacks.
Accordingly, Argon2i was originally considered the correct choice for password hashing and password-based key derivation. In practice it turned out that a combination of d and i – that combines their strengths – is the better choice. And so Argon2id was born and is now considered the main variant (and the only variant required by the RFC to be implemented).
Why “just use bcrypt” Is Not the Best Answer (Anymore)#
The current workhorses of password hashing are unquestionably bcrypt and PBKDF2. And while they’re still fine to use, the password cracking community embraced new technologies like GPUs and ASICs to crack password in a highly parallel fashion.
An effective measure against extreme parallelism proved making computation of password hashes also memory hard. The best known implementation of that approach is to date scrypt. However according to the Argon2 paper [1], page 2:
[…] the existence of a trivial time-memory tradeoff allows compact implementations with the same energy cost.
Therefore a new algorithm was needed. This time future-proof and with committee-vetting instead of single implementors.
Password Hashing Competition#
The Password Hashing Competition took place between 2012 and 2015 to find a new, secure, and future-proof password hashing algorithm. Previously the NIST was in charge but after certain events and revelations their integrity has been put into question by the general public. So a group of independent cryptographers and security researchers came together.
In the end, Argon2 was announced as the winner.