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Password Rules Are Bullshit

blog.codinghorror.com

11–20 of 283 posts

Re: Password Rules Are Bullshit

#11
post #2

Rule 1 is that password rules are bullshit, but all of the other rules lead to needing Rule 1: how are you going to explain to a user that their password cannot be their username, or that their password needs more entropy or complexity?

To be honest I think this is a problem that needs to be solved outside of the web. We need to move towards password managers.

Of course, that comes with its own set of issues: Lose access to the password manager = lose access to all your accounts. An attacker gets access to your password manager = they get access to all your accounts.

On the other hand, for users who use a single 6 character word as their password all over the web, that's essentially the same thing. You can far more easily educate someone in picking a very strong passphrase they will never forget, than get them to use different passwords on each website.

I have successfully converted several non-techies in my family to KeepassX [https://www.keepassx.org/], which I also strongly recommend to anyone here. I had to hold hands at first but after explaining how it works and making sure they understand how important it is, over two years, there's never been any issues.

Re: Password Rules Are Bullshit

#13
post #3

Here's another problem that isn't discussed very much: error messaging and failure modes. I use a command line tool to generate passwords, and I use a password database to store them. It has happened to me before that the maximum password length is something disconcertingly small, like 20 characters. I would copy and paste my password, submit, and then failed to be able to login. Why? Because my password in the "crea…

I read a recent anecdote bout a similar issue. The person had their long password silently truncated to 21 chars on the reset page and 20 chars on the login page. That sounds like a super fun thing to track down as an end user.

Re: Password Rules Are Bullshit

#14

Why don't we just stop allowing users to choose their passwords?

The main reason is that, if IT chooses the user passwords, then the users simply forget the password. Thus, the system for resetting a lost password becomes part of the default login process. In which case, you might as well having a password in the first place.

Re: Password Rules Are Bullshit

#16
post #3

Here's another problem that isn't discussed very much: error messaging and failure modes. I use a command line tool to generate passwords, and I use a password database to store them. It has happened to me before that the maximum password length is something disconcertingly small, like 20 characters. I would copy and paste my password, submit, and then failed to be able to login. Why? Because my password in the "crea…

I think it was an account I had with Sony Planetside where the password was lowercased on signup, but not all parts of their site did it....... (e.g. forums, game itself, etc).

Re: Password Rules Are Bullshit

#17
We hit "peak password" somewhere around 10 years ago. Passwords are both bad security and bad UX. Cryptographic secure keys are better security, but at the cost of a much worse UX.

Bad UX is a defect. We need to stop giving a pass to crypto programmers who make such shitty software. Software that is not easy to use won't be used, and should therefore be considered as insecure as any other defective software.

Re: Password Rules Are Bullshit

#19

It should be mentioned that the NIST reference Jeff sites is only a draft, started last year. https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html It's a great one. Not only does i recommend against composition rules, but > Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically) Oh, if there is a sin against passwords it is forcing quickly memoizable (i.e. simpler) passwords.

Avoid those passwords rotations:

password1 -> password2 -> password3

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