Re:Using HTTP Basic Auth in 2022
by huntertwo on Saturday January 01, 2022 @06:46PM
(#29764115)
If the hash is used to authenticate, how is leaking the hash less bad than leaking the password? If I have the hash I can already impersonate you.
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The hash is not constant.
With public key crypto you can implement a challenge response. Server generates random garbage, send to client, client signs the garbage using priv key, sends it back as a hash that the server can verify using pub key.
Another version of this is with shared secrets instead of public/private, by replacing the signature with simply HMAC(secret, garbage) and keep rest of flow same as above.
Re:Using HTTP Basic Auth in 2022
by staticassertion on Sunday January 02, 2022 @03:08AM
(#29766806)
Yeah, once you get to the ZKP approach, which is what you're describing, the benefits are more significant.
> With public key crypto you can implement a challenge response.
Or just use a client side TLS certificate to authenticate instead of or in addition to the username and password.
Re:Using HTTP Basic Auth in 2022
by staticassertion on Saturday January 01, 2022 @06:57PM
(#29764198)
There are like a dozen other posts where I answer this question so I'd recommend just going to my comment history.
Because many inputs map to that hash (the hashing function is surjective instead of bijective). People re-use passwords all the time. If the hash leaks it will only affect the particular service.