Lyra2 sponge construction and random numbers?

Question

I have a Lyra2 project and I still have some problems understanding its principle.

I really found a problem when I read about sponge contruction. I found out that it's composed of 3 steps: absorbing, squeezing and duplexing and then we xor the (password, salt, ... ) with random numbers (state) so finally we get the password encrypted but then my problem is: it's not possible to decrypt it, isn't it? So probably I'll decrypt it using a dictionary but the thing is since I'm xoring with just random numbers then for the same word I'll have different encryption each time, won't I?

Answer 1

From what I can tell, you've found the salt input to modern password hashing schemes which indeed accepts random numbers to hash the same password to different results on distinct invokations.

Now the idea of the salt is indeed to prevent the dictionary attacks you envisioned (if you keep the salt secret, in which case it becomes pepper) or at least force you to go throgh your entire dictionary for every single salt you encounter, which will take time and slow you down in breaking large databases of passwords. However, normally, all parameters for password hashes are specified (including the salt) and as such it is an entirely deterministic computation from the password and the stored parameters to verify the stored password hash.

Finally, yes: It's impossible to directly recover the password (or a valid password) from its hash as then the function would have failed its most important role which is to make it hard to recover the password.