 | This article contains promotional content. (January 2026) |
yescrypt is a cryptographic key derivation function used for password hashing on Fedora Linux,[1] Debian,[2] Ubuntu,[3] and Arch Linux.[4] The function is more resistant to offline password-cracking attacks than SHA-512.[5] It is based on Scrypt.[5]
Yescrypt is a scalable, password-hashing function and a key-derivation function (KDF) designed by Alexander Peslyak, also known as Solar Designer, to be highly resistant to hardware-accelerated brute-force attacks. As an evolution of the scrypt algorithm, it introduces enhanced memory-hardness and "strongly sequential" processing, which effectively thwarts large-scale cracking attempts using GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs. By requiring a substantial amount of RAM to compute a single hash, it forces attackers to use traditional, memory-expensive computing methods rather than parallelized hardware. Due to its robust security profile and ability to scale with modern hardware advancements, it has been adopted as the default password-hashing scheme for several major Linux distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora, where it is identifiable in the /etc/shadow file by the $y$ prefix.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Changes/yescrypt as default hashing method for shadow". Retrieved 2023-10-10.
- ^ "Chapter 5. Issues to be aware of for bullseye". Retrieved 2023-10-12.
- ^ "yescript replaces sha512 for password hashing". Retrieved 2023-10-12.
- ^ "Arch Linux - Changes to default password hashing algorithm and umask settings". Retrieved 2023-10-10.
- ^ a b "yescrypt". Retrieved 2023-10-10.
External links
[edit]
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | This cryptography-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |