Password hashing on 32bit system then migrating to 64bit systems

Question

I came across a potential issue when migrating from a 32bit system to a 64bit system.

the system runs two 'one way' encryption algos on the string.

However when I tried the same code on a 64 bit system the hashes were different, now thats fine but does anyone have any method on how to ensure the the hash can still be retreived and matched in the future when upgrading to 64bit and beyond?

Without risking the customers sensitive password? or ever storing the raw password or other sensitive data without encryption?

Answer 1

Basically, just make sure that you're using the same algorithm. If your hashes were different with the same inputs, you were using a different algorithm; there may be some unstated dependencies upon the underlying word size. Make sure you don't use those types of algorithms, or if you do, that they have very clear expectations of the word sizes and that those things can be overridden by you.