bcrypt is only strong if their cost / work-factor is set correctly
Targeted cracking attempts against specific hashes are definitely still an issue though.
To you have a credible source for the "10..12 is too low for 2015" claim?
HHVM 3.6 on a small Ubuntu server
>>> timeit.timeit("bcrypt.hashpw('this is a password', bcrypt.gensalt(11))", setup="import bcrypt", number=5) / 5
0.13497538566589357
>>> timeit.timeit("bcrypt.hashpw('this is a password', bcrypt.gensalt(12))", setup="import bcrypt", number=5) / 5
0.28287739753723146
>>> timeit.timeit("bcrypt.hashpw('this is a password', bcrypt.gensalt(13))", setup="import bcrypt", number=5) / 5
0.5341608047485351
>>> timeit.timeit("bcrypt.hashpw('this is a password', bcrypt.gensalt(14))", setup="import bcrypt", number=5) / 5
1.069920015335083
>>> timeit.timeit("bcrypt.hashpw('this is a password', bcrypt.gensalt(15))", setup="import bcrypt", number=5) / 5
2.151028203964233
That's five repetitions of a bcrypt hash with the work factor passed in bcrypt.gensalt(). The resulting units are seconds.
Good thing you made me re-measure :) That makes 13 my new bcrypt default.
Nevertheless, in all implementations I am aware of, the default for that parameter is 10. And earlier, you wrote:
> If they used ten rounds, it's dire, and just saying "bcrypt" doesn't say much unless you also specify the number of rounds.
tedunangst and I both assumed you were referring to the default 10 work factor of BCrypt and were calling it "rounds" as many of us are doing.
The obvious question that tedunangst is asking (and others in this thread) is whether a work factor of 10 is considered too low.