Extinction looms for FTAV’s Mastodon presence

  • stevecrox@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The admins to perform upgrades, monitoring, fixes, etc… will require root access to the database. That means they can alter all your posts to say *blah blah blah" if they wanted.

    Similarly passwords will be encrypted within the database and encryption algorithms have to be able to go in both directions. Normally they need a seed value to start random generation. The admin defines the seed as a result an admin can decrypt everything in the database.

    • kspatlas@artemis.camp
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is incorrect, passwords should be hashed, not encrypted. Hashing is only one way (unless you use a terrible hashing algorithm or your attackers have access to a quantum computer), these hashes are also often salted, which means adding extra data to the hash to protect against some attacks

    • AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Please never talk about passwords and encryption again without actually learning what is going on. You have no idea what you are talking about. Passwords are NEVER encrypted because then passwords can be decrypted and stolen. Passwords are salted (a phrase / string of characters is added somewhere in your password) and then hashed. Hashed are one way you cannot convert a hash back into a raw string. The only way to get a password from the hash is to try and hash random passwords until you get one that matches your hash. Hence the salt which is included and different for every account. You’d have to spend forever on each row in order to figure out passwords. If you EVER find someone has stored ENCRYPTED passwords take them out back and beat them up because they are being criminal in their neglect.