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Comment by gus_massa | Hacker News Reader

> Generate a file containing a random string of text, then encrypt it.

If it's random, why do you need to encript it?

> When the user wants to login, they upload that file to my server in a buffer, where the sha256 is calculated and checked against the database. [...] Either way, the encrypted file is deleted after checking.

This is exactly like the standard method to login users. You don't store the password in the server, you only stored a hash of the password. Why are you proposing to use sha256 instead of bcrypt or scrypt?

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But there's no email or username. No identifier. That's what makes it useful from a privacy standpoint. That, and the only way a user can login is if they upload a file that generates the matching checksum in my database. Whereas with hashed passwords, there's more avenues for an attacker to reveal the actual password. If all they have is only a sha256 sum, they'll probably just give up. Idk maybe I'm wrong and this is pointless to pursue. And I'm not sure what bcrypt or scrypt is, I just thought sha256 would be sufficient for the use case.

I misssed the no-username part ... So everyone is AnonymousCoward. You will need a lot of moderation.

My recomendation is to horseshoe this to a standard user+password implementation, becuase people that know more about security than you and me have thought about it.

Perhaps your server can just ignore the username, so everyone is forced to be anonymous.

The file you are proposing is a password. It's just a strong password generated by the server intead of a hand made silly password.

Usualy there is an implicit user->salt table in the server (that is the first part of the stored hash). So you will have unsalted passwords, that is probably not a problem if they are really strong and are not reused.

If you use a standard ignored_username+strong_password then the browser or a password administrator can keep them and makes the user life easier. (I'm not sure about the supporr of server generated passwords in browsers and administrators.)

Note: bcrypt or scrypt are hashes designed for passwords. They are relatively slow to prevent brute force atacks. The slownes can be regulated and they include salt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrypt

Being an anonymous coward in some countries is better than the alternative. I'm still going to try to do the encrypted file login lol this isn't for personal financial gain or even for some social clout I can gloat about. This is for me to say I did something cool or beneficial for the world. If I could get this to work and gain traction, it will raise the bar for user privacy and maybe put an end to the obvious human data mining operation invading the entirety of the web. In thinking of maybe even doing a SSO service using the same security method.

> Being an anonymous coward in some countries is better than the alternative.

I agree. Good luck with your project. Remember to post it here when it's working or when you have an interesting blog post about an update in the advance of the implementation.

Anyway, as my father used to say, write everithing as if it will be published tomorrow in the front page of a major newspaper of your country.

Thank you for the change of perspective and encouragement. I'm wanting the 1.0 announcement to be an admin blog post from the platform itself.. That way after people read about it, well, they're already there and can try it out or explore the site if they want to.

One of my big concerns is moderation and legal, as I know cybercriminals/scammers will see my platform as a viable tool for their operations. I'm thinking blocking known malicious IP's, maybe some kind of regex system. Ill still new to this so if you have an suggestions, I am desperate to hear them.

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