Scrambling a salted password before hashing. Good idea?

Question

I'm updating an old classic ASP site and I need to store password, so naturally I'm being a bit over cautious about how to go about this given the limitations of Classic ASP.

I'm using both a salt and a pepper (the pepper is a constant stored on the server, not in the database), and I'm just wondering, is there any benifit to shuffling / scrambling the characters of the "pepper + password + salt" string before hashing?

I've written a function that can scramble a string of any length based on a pre-defined (secret) sequence of numbers (the sequence is also stored on the server, not in the database). So the function will always return the same scrambled value rather than a random scrambled value (which of course would be of no use).

I've been reading up a lot on password salting, but I've never seen anyone suggest that the salted password be scrambled before hashing. But to me this seems like a great extra level of security.

Just wondering what others think?

Here's the scramble function (it's written in VBscript):

Function ScrambleSalt(the_str)

    '// Once you've joined the pepper + password + salt, you pass it through the "ScrambleSalt" function before 
    '// hashing. The "ScrambleSalt" function will scramble any string based on a pre-set sequence of numbers. 
    '// The sequence is imported from a txt file (kept in an offline folder, just like the pepper).

    '// The sequence needs to be an incremental collection of numbers (starting from 1) but in a random order 
    '// and comma delimited. Here's and example with 1 to 50, although the actual sequence uses 1 - 500:

    '// 22,8,21,45,49,42,3,36,11,47,19,9,15,23,40,16,29,31,43,38,44,4,41,13,35,26,17,14,10,28,6,5,34,12,39,1,
    '// 30,46,32,7,27,48,33,25,18,2,50,20,24,37

    '// (^ the numbers 1 to 50 in a random order)

    '// How the scrambling process works (using the above example sequence) is by rearranging the characters in 
    '// the string so that characters 22 appears first, followed by character 8, then character 21 etc, etc... 
    '// the function cycles through the sequence ignoring any numbers that are larger than the length of the 
    '// string until the characters in the string have all been rearranged (scrambled).

    '// If a string is more than 50 characters long, it will be split into individual strings, each containing 
    '// 50 characters (or a remainder in the case of the last string).

    '// So if the length of the string is 120 characters long, it will be split into 3 string:

    '// String 1 = 50 chars (chars 1 - 50)
    '// String 2 = 50 chars (chars 51 - 100)
    '// String 3 = 20 chars (chars 101 - 120)

    '// Each string will be scrambled, then joined back together before being returned by the function. 
    '// Using this method means the function can scramble strings of any length and without limit.

    Dim scramble_sequence, sequence_array, scramble_loop, in_loop_str, scrambled_str
    scramble_sequence = file_get_contents(request.ServerVariables("APPL_PHYSICAL_PATH") & "/../keys/scramble_sequence.txt")
    sequence_array = split(scramble_sequence,",")
    scramble_loop = Ceil(len(the_str),uBound(sequence_array)+1) '// round up
    for fx = 0 to scramble_loop-1
        in_loop_str = mid(the_str,fx*(uBound(sequence_array)+1)+1,uBound(sequence_array)+1)
        for fy = 0 to uBound(sequence_array)
            if int(sequence_array(fy)) =< len(in_loop_str) then
                scrambled_str = scrambled_str & mid(in_loop_str,int(sequence_array(fy)),1)
            end if
        next
    next
    ScrambleSalt = scrambled_str

End Function

function Ceil(dividend, divider) ' for rounding up a number
    if (dividend mod divider) = 0 Then
        Ceil = dividend / divider
    else
        Ceil = Int(dividend / divider) + 1
    end if
End function

function file_get_contents(file_path)
    Set fs = Server.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    Set f = fs.OpenTextFile(file_path,1)
        file_get_contents = f.ReadAll
    f.Close : Set f = Nothing : Set fs = Nothing
end function

An example of the above function in action

pepper value used for this example = "XC3Qpm7CNXauwAbX"
scramble sequence used for this example = "9,39,50,43,18,11,36,7,29,41,27,34,12,45,1,14,42,13,6,4,25,19,24,33,30,20,23,10,46,16,49,38,15,5,17,8,47,28,26,3,2,40,37,44,35,32,48,22,31,21"

password = "p@44w0rd"
salt = "G1sWNd0andiIhOYA"

concatenated pepper+password+salt:
XC3Qpm7CNXauwAbXp@44w0rdG1sWNd0andiIhOYA

scrambled using the example sequence:
NY@aI7NsduXAwmQG4dnd4rXXObppCW13CAhia00w

SHA512 Hash:
9d5a7781eeb815250c55c1a1f172c569b3b6167a48951c819e4982bea9b84bd8ecad6a417ff8f110541a1039ddf1fd8daa61a52a7c401fccae71dda77c607540

Answer 1

If someone has gained access to your database, they can also gain access to your scripts if they are on the same server.