Proton Mail Discloses User Data Leading to Arrest in Spain

Re:Proton Mail Discloses User Data Leading to Arrest in Spain by Retr0id on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @12:08PM (#40287518)

> Due to the hash functions being one-way, we cannot derive your data back from the hash

This isn't true in practice. It's not hard to build a big list of ~every email address (give or take), and have a GPU churn through them all until you get a match.

If you've ever received a spam email, your email address is on such a list.

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Re:Proton Mail Discloses User Data Leading to Arrest in Spain by alexey-salmin on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @02:26PM (#40289611)

argon2id with dynamic salt should effectively prevent this, but it will also not allow to tell if two users have the same e-mail or not -- which I suspect is the main reason for hashing in the first place.

If equality-check is required to prevent e-mail reuse by spammers then argon2id with static salt rotated every few months will be reasonably strong too.

Of course I have no idea if any of this is implemented or it's just sha256(email). Just replying to the question of general feasibility.

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