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Yes, but let's imagine this:

Salt is not hidden, if you get the passwords, you get the salt

But then you might suspect user X is using a weak password (that you know)

Then you use that to bruteforce the pepper (a defence would be to have a big pepper)

Or you know, if you already got in and got the password hashes it shouldn't be too difficult to get the source code/config info.



Oh, another argument is that sometimes the attacker gets to your DB at time t1, and your codebase at time t2, and if you have a system that changes your pepper regularly the t1 may be out of sync at t2.

All in all, it seems like a lot of work (that could be spent elsewhere) for little gain. I've been burned enough to know that any tweaks to a crypto system to "make it better" sometimes shoot you in the foot instead.




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