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A well-known URL for changing passwords

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Re: A well-known URL for changing passwords

#171
post #99

This is so relevant. Just 10 mins ago, I got a short, casual, no-reply email from Teachable about an email & passwords breach. If you're a startup and you're storing plaintext passwords out of expediency, realize you're doing a massive disservice to your customers. It seems they changed this in 2015, but didn't go back and fix it for their earliest adopters. Your early adopters make you what you are! Protect their da…

Just as an example once when changing the hashing for users on a relatively popular site.

Implemented new prefix + hash + salt system. On login, if old system was used, verify and re-hash with new password system. Notify users to login after 60 days of inactivity. After 90 days, clear all passwords that didn't have the new hashing system, forcing out of band change-password process. Worked out very well in practice.

It helps to have a plan to deprecate older hashing approaches to passwords.

Re: A well-known URL for changing passwords

#172
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then your email gets compromised and everything is immediately lost? No thanks

Everything is already lost if your email is compromised as they can just use the "forgotten password" functionality and reset it thanks to their access to your email.

And that is why I have a 2FA app for my email.

Re: A well-known URL for changing passwords

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine those taking off without legislation. Making it easier to change passwords is more or less in the interest of the companies who make web sites; making it easier to delete accounts or export all of your data, by comparison, is not.

Until users decide that the businesses interests of the companies that run the websites they use are less important than their own interests these features will never catch on. How about we stop using websites that fail to implement things that are good for us ? In fact, someone could write a browser plugin to put a screen between the user and the website that states "This website fails to implement .well-known link.…

But then how would users get to Facebook? /s

You could have that plugin have a database of sites and also provide easy links for those sites that try to hide those functions.

Re: A well-known URL for changing passwords

#174
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How lucky for you in 2018 that you don't seem to have any trouble with botnets trying to crack your passwords, hack your accounts, or even just break your accounts so that you cannot use them.

Exactly. Most password leaks seem to come from hacked websites and thus badly implemented security. And that's another point i was making: Keep it simple but secure, so that implementors have it simple and don't mess it up. Can you point me to some source for botnets which crack passwords? I would be surprised. It's not feasible to brute-force a password over HTTP.

My Steam account has had high entropy, sole use passwords cracked in the timeframe of months, which would seem to indicate (if Valve is not leaking [1]) a botnet using their "simple" HTTPS login endpoints to brute force passwords. So far Steam Guard (2FA) has stopped the attacks, but that doesn't make me feel that much better given the speed in which the passwords seem to be cracking.

That's just one account I see as currently most at risk. There are plenty of others I'm concerned about as well.

Passwords are fragile, brittle things. "Simple" security is no longer an answer when dealing with passwords. FULL STOP. It's time we moved past passwords altogether, but even where we can't, we absolutely have to be serious about password security from top to bottom.

You can victim blame "hacked websites" for "badly implemented security" all you want, but that's part of the point, too. Password infrastructure will always be lowest common denominator, because it is "easy", because it is "simple". Everyone thinks they can implement password security, and everyone is wrong. There are still people that don't hash, much less salt, their passwords in 2018. There are still people that don't realize "Security Questions" are Plaintext Passwords and a giant security risk. In the age of bitcoin mining there is no such thing as a hashed or salted password that cannot be brute forced. Bitcoin mining is password brute force at massive scale, and dropped rainbow table hardware to the price floor.

I'm sorry that you still have any illusions left that passwords are and/or can be "simple". Passwords are dead and yet we're all going to be fighting that forest fire for decades to come.

[1] Which admittedly, is a possibility, but it would be a surprising shock for an application as big as Steam.

Re: A well-known URL for changing passwords

#175

Here is the actual spec: https://wicg.github.io/change-password-url/index.html Presumably this is only for accounts you are already logged into and want to change the password of, since change password forms usually aren't accessible unless you are already logged in. However, the same domain may involve multiple account types. AWS and other popular websites have multiple types of accounts, different login methods, an…

This is being tracked by https://github.com/WICG/change-password-url/issues/4

Re: A well-known URL for changing passwords

#176

Can someone clarify, is this actually for resetting a forgotten password? I don't quite follow. example.com's change password functionality should be behind an authenticated page that requires a) the user be already logged in, and 2) the user's current password (for confirmation). Whereas example.com's forgot/reset password functionality is usually a wide-open page anyone can reach to begin the process of password re…

This is being tracked by https://github.com/WICG/change-password-url/issues/4

Re: A well-known URL for changing passwords

#177
post #136

> If it's there (the response code is 2xx or 3xx), the password manager can cause the user's browser to navigate there when the user indicates they'd like to change their password. The primary issue I see here is that there are a lot of websites that do 301 redirects from either non-www to www subdomain or non-https to https, would this not confuse the password managers in assuming there is a .well-known even though…

This is being tracked by https://github.com/WICG/change-password-url/issues/4

Re: A well-known URL for changing passwords

#178

Seems like a nice subtle way to hijack the changing password mechanism, particularly on a sub-domain you control. Just set the URL to e.g. " https://evilsite/changepasswords" and wait for Password Managers to be updated. The fact that the spec says nothing about where a user can be redirected, and which domains/sub-domains are within scope for which change password requests seems like an oversight. For example if my…

This is being tracked by https://github.com/WICG/change-password-url/issues/8

Re: A well-known URL for changing passwords

#179

From the spec: > Servers must not locate the actual change password page at the change password url, per RFC5785 §1.1 Appropriate Use of Well-Known URIs. I scanned the RFC but can't fine the prohibition against this. Curious, why does it matter? Just because .well-known URLs are not meant to be exposed to the user?

This is being tracked by https://github.com/WICG/change-password-url/issues/9
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