On Sat, Sep 19, 2026 at 11:00 PM Anton Smirnov <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> My point is mostly about this part:
>
> > Argon2 for settings that are reasonable for interactive
> > authentication is worse than BCrypt
>
> Like, if there were any successful attacks on bcrypt that negate that part
>

Yes and no.

That part was based on a tweet from 2019, based on many unknowns
(parameters, hardware, worse by how much, etc.) very broadly saying
sub-1000ms.

By 2023, we have slightly more clarity and comparable strenghts at just
over 500ms: https://infosec.exchange/@epixoip/110912922574721750 (note that
it looks somewhat scary because of the large memory cost, but time cost is
always 1; very different from PHP's defaults)
At that same time the bar is described as anywhere between sub40-100ms for
bcrypt and above 400-1000ms argon2, I guess with no clear winner in
between? https://infosec.exchange/@sc00bz/110228557196895869

In the meantime, all of this benchmark-centric talk is missing the forest
for a tree, as cracking either algorithm is practically infeasible but
vanilla bcrypt has more serious issues relevant to the average developer:
https://soatok.blog/2024/11/27/beyond-bcrypt/
All of the "bcrypt is stronger for auth" people have their own versions of
how to solve its non-computational weaknesses too, they do recognize the
problem, but people who care mostly about benchmarks and maths will only
talk about the benchmarks and maths. :)

This can be a very contentious subject, and I don't want to go down the
rabbit hole if the much simpler matter of dependencies would kill the
argument anyway, hence my original question. If for a moment we assume
Argon2id is better, can we rely on OpenSSL for default?

Cheers,
Andrey.

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