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necovekyesterday at 11:49 PM1 replyview on HN

My question still stands: how do you disallow cleartext password extraction if you are breached, assuming all your IT infrastructure and code is now accessible to an attacker?

I am talking about not logging them ever, using internal TLS and strong hashing in general, and wondering what exact value is added on top with client side hashing.


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fc417fc802today at 12:33 AM

There are substantial differences between database access, snooping the logs, internal (no TLS) wiretap, and full MITM of the frontend.

Hashing client side minimizes the risk of any blast radius exceeding the bounds of your own service. There's obviously no way to prevent an adversary who achieves full MITM from gradually harvesting credentials over time. The only solution there is to use keys instead of passwords.

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