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by icebraining 4513 days ago
No, you can use a different system: don't send the password to the server, instead create a private/public key pair from the password (deterministically) and send only the public key to the server.

When you want to authenticate, just have the client sign something with the private key. If you want to encrypt on the client, it can just do PGP-like encryption (encrypt data with random AES key, encrypt that key with public key, send all to the server).
1 comments
blueskin_ 4513 days ago
Considering the average user's password choice tendencies, that's still weaker than a key from a proper source of entropy, then password reuse on top of that.

That plus IIRC, RSA isn't deterministic even with the same seed. Not sure about generators for elliptic curve though.

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tga_d 4513 days ago
They're using key-stretching to mitigate the use of bad passphrases, though reuse will still be an issue.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Identity/AttachedServices/KeyServer...

And RSA is deterministic.

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icebraining 4513 days ago
I think it is, at least that's what Cryptico[1] does, if I understand it correctly.

[1] https://github.com/wwwtyro/cryptico

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