How exactly are the password hashing functions in the pgcrypto module different from the regular MD5 and other algorithms?

Question

This is not technically a database question, but about the innards of Postgres's pgcrypto extension.The documentation says

The algorithms in crypt() differ from the usual MD5 or SHA1 hashing algorithms in the following respects:

I would like to know how/where might I be able to find the details of the hashing algorithms.

Ideally, I would like to compare the algorithms of pgcrypto with the regular versions of the algorithms.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 15 '23 at 17:29

Since Postgresql is open source, you can find the code of hashing algorithms easily.

Basically, pg_crypt function calls px_crypt function which picks algoritm and calls related hashing function for example px_crypt_md5 which is imported from FreeBSD source.

How exactly are the password hashing functions in the pgcrypto module different from the regular MD5 and other algorithms?

1 Answers1