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In the past I've heard about a scheme to prove your identity online in places like forums, without having to create an account.

When posting, the user would enter a password which is then heavily hashed and displayed publicly along with the post. This way the user can prove his identity between posts without having to create an account with a fixed name and password.

I'm not sure what to Google for. So far I've found the term "commitment scheme" on Wikipedia, but googling further on that, I can't find other places using it (though I'm sure there have to be some).

Does this kind of commitment scheme (publicizing a password hash) have a name?

NULLZ
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Luc
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1 Answers1

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Displaying a hash of nick and password to identify users is known as Tripcode.

There are different variants of this, sometimes the website operator adds a secret key, sometimes an expensive hash like PBKDF2 or bcrypt is used, sometimes the password is replaced by public key.

CodesInChaos
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