passwordauthenticated

Passwordauthenticated is a broad term used to describe authentication methods that rely on a user-provided password and cryptographic techniques to verify identity and establish a secure session. In practice, passwordauthentication spans both traditional password-based login systems and password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocols, which aim to prevent password leakage and offline guessing.

Traditional implementations store a salted hash of the password and verify credentials by comparing a computed hash with the stored verifier. To resist offline attacks, modern systems employ memory-hard key derivation functions such as bcrypt, scrypt, Argon2, or PBKDF2, and enforce protections around credential storage and transmission (e.g., TLS).

PAKE protocols, including SRP, SPAKE2, J-PAKE, and OPAQUE, enable a client and server to derive a shared session key using only the password, without sending the password itself and with no verifier that enables offline guessing by an attacker who intercepts messages. These protocols provide mutual authentication and can be used to implement password-based logins with stronger security guarantees than simple password verification.

Security considerations for passwordauthenticated include enforcing strong, unique passwords, deploying multi-factor authentication, rate limiting and account lockout policies, and safeguarding credential storage and cryptographic keys. Adoption decisions vary by threat model and infrastructure, with PAKE-based approaches offering stronger protection against phishing and offline attacks than traditional hash-based schemes.