Scrypt is Memory Hard.
Scrypt is a memory-hard function designed to protect against denial-of-service attacks and for metering clients' access. It is resistant to specialized hardware like ASICs and FPGAs, making it more secure than other algorithms.
What Is Scrypt?
Scrypt is a memory-hard function (MHF) designed by Percival that is used in various applications, including password hashing, key derivation, and proofs-of-work. It is a type of algorithm that requires a large amount of memory to evaluate, making it very difficult for an attacker to run many evaluations simultaneously. Scrypt is designed to make it more difficult for attackers to use specialized hardware to reduce the cost of evaluating the algorithm. By making it difficult to evaluate the algorithm in parallel, scrypt reduces the disparity between the cost to evaluate the algorithm for an honest user and a potential attacker. This makes it an effective tool for protecting against denial-of-service attacks and for metering clients' access to websites.
What Makes Scrypt Memory Hard?
Scrypt is a memory-hard function, which is designed to be hard to evaluate using specialized hardware, such as an ASIC or FPGA. This is because the evaluation of Scrypt requires a lot of memory, and memory is inherently general-purpose and thus costs about the same across different platforms. This makes it difficult for an attacker to build a dedicated device to quickly evaluate the function since they would need to use the same amount of memory regardless of the platform. As a result, the cost of evaluating Scrypt is dominated by memory cost, which is memory-hard. In layman's terms, Scrypt is designed to be difficult to evaluate quickly since it requires a lot of memory and the cost of memory is the same across different platforms.
Can SHA256 ASICs Mine Scrypt?
No. Scrypt is designed to be memory-hard, meaning it is impossible to evaluate at a significantly lower cost on dedicated hardware like ASICs. This is because memory, unlike computation, costs about the same across different platforms, so ASICs cannot gain any advantage. This makes scrypt an ideal choice for cryptocurrency mining, as it is resistant to centralization of power.
What Are The Security Advantages Of Using Scrypt?
The main security advantage of using Scrypt is that it is memory-hard, meaning it is more resistant to attacks from specialized hardware, such as ASICs and FPGAs, which can be used to compute algorithms at a much lower cost than is possible on a general-purpose computer because Scrypt requires a large amount of memory, so it is difficult to use it in a brute-force attack. This makes it more secure than other algorithms, as it is more resistant to attacks that attempt to guess passwords by trying many possible combinations. Finally, Scrypt is designed to be fast enough for interactive use, meaning that it can be used for applications such as logging in to websites without causing significant delays for the user.
Resources
I never truly understood what the scrypt parameters 𝑁, 𝑟 and 𝑝 meant. So I read the paper and wrote it up for you. https://t.co/BL2a0BWAWH
— Filippo Valsorda (@FiloSottile) October 4, 2017
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