Which hashing & salting algorithm should be used ?

Gentlemen, as this has been a big topic, and there's still no real answer to this, I would like to introduce this wiki page. Feel free to post/change whatever you like, the goal is to find an answer to the question:

Which hashing & sorting algorithm should be used in the script ?

A little keynote: As this project gets more attention than i ever thought, there's some kind of responsibility NOT TO DELIVER insecure stuff.

According to the PHP's crypt() doc page CRYPT_BLOWFISH uses 22 char salt and generates a 60 char hash, and CRYPT_SHA512 uses a 16 char salt and generates a 118 char hash. Both algorithms have changeable cost factors (that allow to change to "intensity" of the hashing/salting function, useful when technology becomes stronger and servers/crackers have more power), so at first view, SHA512 looks stronger (because longer).

I have asked this on stackoverflow - but as usually - the question has been closed, because of "off topic". Yeah, sure. link

A similar question, with 90+ upvotes and answers with nearly 150 upvotes here, has also been closed due to "not constructive". Seriously, what the hell is wrong with those people ?

##TODO:##

1. make the (excellent) benchmarks, posted by LexLythius in the first stackoverflow link, again, reproduceable and publish the results.

2. contact several security experts and get statements on "which hash/salt algorithm should we use ?".

##Benchmark: All crypt() hash/salt algorithms##

All of those loops use "rasmuslerdorf" as the password. I'm not sure if it's fair to compare them like this, but we'll see. This benchmark has been made on a i3 2120 CPU with 8GB of 1066 RAM [might be important, as crypt relies quite much on RAM speed].

BLOWFISH: uses a cost factor from 04 to 31 (the two digit cost parameter is the base-2 logarithm of the iteration count for the underlying Blowfish-based hashing algorithmeter).

SHA256/SHA512: uses a cost factor in form of how many times the hashing loop will be executed. The default number of rounds is 5000, there is a minimum of 1000 and a maximum of 999,999,999.

Runtime for 100 runs with CRYPT_STD_DES, which has a 2 character salt	0.029006004333496 seconds
Runtime for 100 runs with CRYPT_EXT_DES, which has a 9 character salt	0.062263965606689 seconds
Runtime for 100 runs with CRYPT_MD5, which has a 12 character salt	0.27028179168701 seconds
Runtime for 100 runs with CRYPT_BLOWFISH with $2a [before PHP 5.3.7], which has a 22 character salt and standard cost factor of 7	1.8341250419617 seconds
Runtime for 100 runs with CRYPT_BLOWFISH with $2y [from PHP 5.3.7], which has a 22 character salt and standard cost factor of 7	1.8966331481934 seconds
Runtime for 100 runs with CRYPT_SHA256, which has a 16 character salt and standard cost round factor of 5000	0.97224402427673 seconds
Runtime for 100 runs with CRYPT_SHA512, which has a 16 character salt and standard cost round factor of 5000	1.3613569736481 seconds

BLOWFISH wins (because it's the slowest). As this is just a comparison with the given standard parameters, this benchmark might be not accurate or even totally wrong.