Cryptanalysis on the Head and Tail Technique for Hashing Passwords

Researchers and experts had developed numerous hash-based password authentication schemes. Inappropriately, most of them are susceptible to different attacks. This study centers on the process of performing cryptanalysis on the developed Head and Tail (HT) technique for hashing passwords. The research tested the HT technique in terms of its capacity to resist a dictionary attack, rainbow tables attack, and brute-force attack. To test the strength of the HT technique, HashCat, John the Ripper, RainbowCrack, and online cracking systems from crackstation.net and hashkiller.co.uk were used as tools for cracking. After the experiment, the result shows that the cracking tools failed to crack the HT technique. Further tests showed that generating a password-hash value pair or lookup table for MD5-HT and SHA1-HT is 16 times slower than standard MD5 and SHA1. Thus, the Head and Tail (HT) technique is a secured method for hashing passwords.