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---
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stage: Manage
group: Access
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info: To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#assignments
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type: reference
---
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# Password storage **(FREE)**
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GitLab stores user passwords in a hashed format to prevent passwords from being
stored as plain text.
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GitLab uses the [Devise ](https://github.com/heartcombo/devise ) authentication
library to hash user passwords. Created password hashes have these attributes:
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- **Hashing**: The [`bcrypt` ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt ) hashing
function is used to generate the hash of the provided password. This is a
strong, industry-standard cryptographic hashing function.
- **Stretching**: Password hashes are [stretched ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_stretching )
to harden against brute-force attacks. By default, GitLab uses a stretching
factor of 10.
- **Salting**: A [cryptographic salt ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_(cryptography ))
is added to each password to harden against pre-computed hash and dictionary
attacks. To increase security, each salt is randomly generated for each
password, with no two passwords sharing a salt.
