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Sites with dumb password rules

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Re: Sites with dumb password rules

#241

I've been getting pretty annoyed by the "Security Questions" some sites have you setup. A client I work with gave me a vendor account, with a preset list of security questions I had to answer. One was 'What was the color of your first car?'. I typed in 'Red', and got an error that the entry needed to be at least 4 characters long.

I have a credit card that requires you to answer a security question just to make a payment, with an existing linked account. I can't fathom what scenario they think they are protecting against here.

Re: Sites with dumb password rules

#242

I've been getting pretty annoyed by the "Security Questions" some sites have you setup. A client I work with gave me a vendor account, with a preset list of security questions I had to answer. One was 'What was the color of your first car?'. I typed in 'Red', and got an error that the entry needed to be at least 4 characters long.

Yes - Apple are one of the worst. I truthfully could not answer most of their questions, some of which seemed very US-centric. For example, I've never owned my car and do I really have a favourite colour?

Re: Sites with dumb password rules

#243

I've been getting pretty annoyed by the "Security Questions" some sites have you setup. A client I work with gave me a vendor account, with a preset list of security questions I had to answer. One was 'What was the color of your first car?'. I typed in 'Red', and got an error that the entry needed to be at least 4 characters long.

Yeah, I've seen a similar restriction on mother's maiden name =/

My mother (and many many women in this modern world) _goes by her maiden name_ so it's not exactly a secret.

I always (politely) point this out when I'm dealing with a human at an institution who asks me for this information as part of the security process.

Re: Sites with dumb password rules

#244
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My pet peeve is sites that block pasting Firefox: about:config: dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled, toggle to "false" (default is true). Result: websites can no longer block you from pasting things into form fields on your own browser on your own computer.

so you can paste with the menu? Because I guess they would just catch the keyboard events?

Nope. Don’t think so.

Re: Sites with dumb password rules

#245
post #47

My favorite dumb password experience involves EZPass, a system for paying tolls without cash, in New York. I signed up for EZPass using a relatively “long” password (20 chars). I then received a letter in the mail about a toll I had to pay, even though I’d had the EZPass at the the time. But, the letter said, I could pay the toll by logging in to their site and using my EZpass credentials. Didn’t use OAuth but I figu…

I'm almost positive LINE does this with their 20 char limit too.

Re: Sites with dumb password rules

#246
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everyone (including the big tech companies) pretend that security questions are secure and should even be mandatory? It's mind-boggling to me.

The other day I called my insurance to reset my online password and couldn't remember the answers to any of the security questions (I shop around every year so I never had to call them since I registered my account with them). The person on the phone then just asked me a basic question about the policy, which I got right since I had the policy in front of me, and was then happy to change my password. Fantastic... not…

I realise it's not ideal, but it's an open question West you'd like them to do instead? Do you want them to refuse you service completely, for example?

Re: Sites with dumb password rules

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other day I called my insurance to reset my online password and couldn't remember the answers to any of the security questions (I shop around every year so I never had to call them since I registered my account with them). The person on the phone then just asked me a basic question about the policy, which I got right since I had the policy in front of me, and was then happy to change my password. Fantastic... not…

I realise it's not ideal, but it's an open question West you'd like them to do instead? Do you want them to refuse you service completely, for example?

If they are happy to ignore my answers to the security questions and go with other questions instead then they should scrap the security questions altogether. Otherwise, yes, they should refuse me service because the point is to use the security questions to establish whether I am who I am claiming to be.

Re: Sites with dumb password rules

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they were using z/OS or RACF [1] mainframe as a backend. Oof. Unfortunately, it's not that uncommon. I've done security consulting work at a few major F500 companies that were using this and had those same password rules. At one of them, it got to the point where almost every security review meeting had to start with "yes yes we already know how bad the password are, don't bring it up, let's talk about so…

Still no excuse. They need to create a custom encoding that works with their backend that allows more flexibility is password choice. It is not that tough of a problem.

> They need to create a custom encoding...

IBM already has solutions for secure passwords of variable length. Outdated systems may have stored passwords as plaintext with symbol limitations, but modern RACF can hash passwords, encrypt profiles, and generally take whatever you throw at it and handle it securely. The tech isn't the problem, only the personnel.

Re: Sites with dumb password rules

#250
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use an ultra secure password schema such as September2019@$ . They obviously want you to use it considering that policy

I once tried Password1 scheme as a form of protestation for a client corp account I'd connect every 2 month or so but that had a 1 month rotation policy (so that I actually had to change my password every time I connected to them). It worked... Obviously I changed it to something else but regularly tried if still worked. The big payout was when we had an on-site formation from a third party and the teacher needed to…

Oh yeah. Yeeeears ago, I was contracting for a telecom provider, and as a contractor, the process for getting logins to all the stuff I needed access to was onerous in some cases, nonexistent in others. So the employee who was sponsoring my presence in the building just said I could share his login. "The password is Apr1999!, if you happen to be the first one to log in when it expires, just change it to May1999! and so on, alright?"

It satisfied the uppercase, lowercase, number, symbol, and non-reuse criteria perfectly, while having precisely zero security.

Come to find out, something like a dozen different contractors were all sharing this one guy's login. He was the only reason anything got done in the whole region. The "system", such as it was, worked, but it made a mockery of corporate IT.

A few months into the project, that employee gave his notice and quit. Went to work for the competitor across the street; we'd bump into each other at the diner and stuff. But they couldn't just turn off his login -- his manager understood that all the contractors were using it, so they just left it active, and whoever got the expiry prompt would dutifully update the password every month...

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