FESCo Says "Yes" To Fedora 35 Using Yescrypt For Hashing Shadow Passwords

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee has said "yes" to using Yescrypt for hashing shadow passwords with this distribution's next release. Using Yescrypt in place of SHA256/SHA512 should lead to greater security for new user accounts.

For a few weeks there has been a change proposal to use Yescrypt as the default hashing method for new user passwords stored in /etc/shadow. Yescrypt should be more secure and other Linux distributions like Debian Testing, Kali Linux, and ALT Linux have also been switching over to it.

All FESCo members have approved the change for the current Fedora Linux 35 cycle.

Those wanting to learn more about the technical details of Yescrypt can do so via Openwall.com.