Last week, I tried to register for a service and was really surprised by a password limit of 16 characters. Why on earth yould you impose such strict limits? Never heard of correct horse battery staple?

  • wer2@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    It doesn’t matter the input size, it hashes down to the same length. It does increase the CPU time, but not the storage space. If the hashing is done on the client side (pre-transmission), then the server has no extra cost.

    For example, the hash of a Linux ISO isn’t 10 pages long. If you SHA-256 something, it always results in 256 bits of output.

    On the other hand, base 64-ing something does get longer as the input grows.