3 ms·
Given the typical length and character set of email addresses, 'reversing' the hash can be considered trivial.
by rendx 3y ago
Given the typical length and character set of email addresses, 'reversing' the hash can be considered trivial.
- layer8 3y agoPresumably you’d choose a long localpart for the recovery address. Proton could even require that.
- acdha 3y agoNot every mail system supports that and the longer & harder to guess it is the more likely it is that whatever disaster lead to needing the recovery process would also lose that information.
- layer8 3y agoThe rules on how long a local-part is allowed to be are very clear (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5321#section-4.5.3.1.1 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5321#section-4.5.3....), and once you’ve registered the address you would know that it works. You’d write it down and/or store it in your password manager like you would with any passphrase. I really don’t see the problem.
- acdha 3y agoIt’s not a question of whether it’s technically possible but practical to expect people to maintain a recovery address which is not otherwise used or guessable. If you can pull it off, sure, but from a security perspective I’d probably be looking for a way to avoid email at all for this mechanism since it just wasn’t designed around address privacy.
- littlestymaar 3y agoNot if done properly, with a hard hash function and a length requirement on the email address.