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This repository was archived by the owner on Oct 12, 2025. It is now read-only.
This repository was archived by the owner on Oct 12, 2025. It is now read-only.

Phone # or SSN account association #67

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@WingZer0o

Let's say I wanted to cryptographically associate two unrelated things like a SSN and a Phone # to a single person's email such that knowledge of either the SSN or Phone # leads to a 2FA access granted type of situation through the email. Would it make sense to concatenate the email and entity then use SHA3 to create a hash?

H(A || B)

f... — 9:45 AM
That could work, if I understand you correctly and "entity" would either be SSN or phone number, but I would warn you against doing so, as there are numerous data breaches and simply freely available data which associate phone number and email
[9:46 AM]
If you combine clicking on a link in a verification email and requiring knowledge of one of those details, then it would be fine (edited)

W... — 9:48 AM
I figured the might 2FA would compensate for that in a local development scenario. Sweet man at least I wasn't too far off with my morning coffee run thought.

Conrad "luscious locks" Ludgate

RUST
— 9:50 AM
at the very least, you would need a better encoding - length prefixes likely

1
[9:50 AM]
additionally, definitely add a salt and definitely add multiple hash rounds. SSN and phone numbers are low entropy

f... — 9:51 AM
Also, I think using a password hash function might be a better idea than SHA3 because phone numbers can be a bit low entropy (esp. if you factor in that extwitter simply shows you the last two digits of associated phone numbers, plus the first few are very easy to guess)

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