This is like that Catalonia hashed database for voter identification that ended up outing national ID / birthday / zipcode associations. Hashes aren't magical pixie dust. If the search space is bruteforceable, they amount to the illusion of security.
-
Show this thread
-
If you *must* do this (and understand the risks), either use full legal names to maximize entropy and a very strong salted hash, like say bcrypt/scrypt tuned to take 5 seconds per hash on a CPU, or similar...
2 replies 3 retweets 15 likesShow this thread -
... or use a very *weak* hash, like the 6-digit prefix of the SHA1 (24 bits), to guarantee collisions and thus make it a probabilistic filter and not something you could brute force usefully.
5 replies 1 retweet 18 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @marcan42
Keeping there names a secret is not the point. Its against it actually. It just about getting some time to find others, without dropping a plaintext Google spreadsheet.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @harce
I know. And I'm saying that won't work after someone writes a Twitter bot to reverse the hashes in seconds for the lulz, turning the approach into the equivalent of a plaintext Google spreadsheet.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @marcan42
Oh wow, public records that are meant to be accessible for other interested people are not fully secure? Who in the sec community would see that coming?!
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @harce
I dunno, ask the OP, she seems to think it's not a problem and not worth discussing, considering, or making clear to those using this scheme.
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @marcan42
So you just assume that a bunch of women in the security industry have no idea what they are doing, while its quite obvious, and you can't understand why they are not interested in you explaining obvious stuff to them? Should I further explain why?
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @harce
I conclude that *one* woman (who is a biologist) is clearly not aware of the tradeoffs in the design of this purported hash-based protocol and also doesn't seem to be interested in discussing it before blindly giving advice to others.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @marcan42
Have you checked how many brilliant men stepped up to inform her of that, or did you not bother? I'd love to see you guys being so active targeting predators as you are paternalising their victims.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
Half of those "brilliant" men were conflating concepts like rainbow tables that are tangential and not offering any practical advice on how to improve the protocol or how to evaluate it. I tried to do the latter.
-
-
But hey, I guess trying to help victims of sexual abuse coordinate and come forward in a safer way while understanding the risks is frowned upon if you're a white cis male. Why do I even bother?
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like - Show replies
New conversation -
-
-
Replying to @marcan42
The first one is what they are doing, or it has no point, the latter one is not applicable in such a scenario. Not the best advice ever tbh.
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likesThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.