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I hate password rules

schneier.com

211–220 of 447 posts

Re: I hate password rules

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My password generator can make pronounceable nonsense words. It has worked ok so far. Some of them are embarrassing though.

My password generator (or just do it manually) can generate word passwords like correct-horse-battery-staple using real words, which is probably a bit easier to read over the phone.

  grep --perl-regexp '^[a-z]{4,7}$' /usr/share/dict/words | \
    shuf -n 5 | tr '\n' ' '
Although maybe just 2 or 3 words would be best for avoiding a support agent skipping the question.

  bless clench moraine

Re: I hate password rules

#212
not a password rule but: i use a password length of > 40 characters because why not? signing up for paypal worked with that no problemo until i had to sign in again and the login input ignored everything north of 20 characters or so. It worked after removing the maxlength attribute :(

Re: I hate password rules

#213
post #201

NIST best practice recommendations state: * Require more than 8 characters * Don't require special characters * Don't force the user to reset their password * Do check for compromised passwords * Require MFA * ... All very sensible. https://auth0.com/blog/dont-pass-on-the-new-nist-password-gu...

How to practically check for common passwords? Ideal would be to have like the most common 1/1000th of the hibp so that it's not too big for deployment in some clever structure (compressed trie? bloom filter?). I don't trust 3rd party services.

Have you heard about https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords ?

Re: I hate password rules

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst sites are the ones that truncate my generated password to fit their maximum password length and then don't tell me Or worse, they truncate your password after you've already used it for years and years. I had a 30-character password with Bank of America. Somewhere along the line, it changed its password requirements to only allow a maximum of 20 or 25 characters (I forget), which automatically invalidated m…

I'm not sure why anyone uses banks like BoA, Wells Fargo, First Niagara, etc. Fidelity is a superior experience in nearly every way - just categorically. I'm not sure if people just don't know that you can use Fidelity this way? The only downsides are no local branches, but that's hardly an issue unless you need a cashiers check. In those rare cases you can spin up an account at shitty bank, get the check, then close…

In what way? I'd be curious to understand what it is you value about them, but your post reads more like marketing than a satisfied customer story.

Re: I hate password rules

#215
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to travel a lot and the exact combination of no signal and internet was not frequent at all.

That heavily depends on where you travel. Even here in Southern California there are populated areas with little to no mobile internet service (like Big Bear Lake, Anza Borrego, or Joshua Tree areas for example)

And they still have internet available to travelers?

Re: I hate password rules

#216
post #79

My frustration isn't just the sites that make the password rules clear after I submit the form. The worst sites are the ones that truncate my generated password to fit their maximum password length and then don't tell me (which seems to happen in more places than it should).

I've also had fun experiences where the "special characters" differ in the description than in the implementation in a few ways. Once I had a password accepted with non-alpha numeric characters which were considered invalid as input on the login screen and so even though my password was correct it would not let me log in because it was validated with different logic after creation. Another issue I've seen is that the…

For a while, Discord had few password restrictions so 5 characters were fine. Then they changed their app to only allow 6+ character passwords.

Re: I hate password rules

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For websites, you're just making your own life harder for no real gain. Even with purely alphanumeric 10 chars, it's not like anyone can exhaust the 36^10 password space over a network with no one noticing. Yet whenever you run into issues with the website or the password manager (or some other non-routine thing... like you're on your phone and need to enter this on a different computer) and have to enter it manually…

I guess you assume that everyone protects their stored hashes.

Not really. Even if you're worried about that, (36 alphanumeric + 10 symbols)^10 is roughly 4E16. Even at 2B checks/second/CPU (which is incredibly generous if the web developer has any competence) that's around 10M CPU-seconds, i.e. 115 CPU-days. For cracking one single password. An ASIC will speed it up, but again, remember this is one single password, and it can be an overestimate by like a factor of > 1 million if the developer actually used a KDF (and I'm not sure why they wouldn't, if they're already hashing). How paranoid do you have to be (and how big of a target do you have to have made of yourself? and exactly how valuable are your credentials?) to worry about a threat like this for most websites? Maybe it makes sense for your primary email, but do average accounts really benefit? Compared to the inconvenience of when something goes wrong and you have to type a long password manually.

Re: I hate password rules

#218
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also had fun experiences where the "special characters" differ in the description than in the implementation in a few ways. Once I had a password accepted with non-alpha numeric characters which were considered invalid as input on the login screen and so even though my password was correct it would not let me log in because it was validated with different logic after creation. Another issue I've seen is that the…

I spent half a year being charged monthly by Microsoft because Google considers my email address the same whether or not it has a period in it but Microsoft had somehow split my account into two based on that difference.

that's.. really on you I think, and not at all similar to one site having differing validation rules in different places for the same data. What gmail does there isn't some kind of standard, it's a unique special feature google does. You don't want other sites getting clever about this sort of thing, because if the rules change much worse things will happen.

Now, sites that treat email addresses as case sensitive - those are evil.

Re: I hate password rules

#219
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

openssl rand -hex 8 | sed 's/..../&-/g;s/-$//' Or if you like upper-case letters: openssl rand -hex 8 | sed 's/..../&-/g;s/-$//;y/abcdef/ABCDEF/

This would still parse as "random letters and numbers" to your typical support agent, no?

Maybe, but it's close to what I use. It's a limited character set and more or less looks like a credit-card which people are used to seeing.

It's either that or pick a random dictionary word.

Re: I hate password rules

#220
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's how you ensure everyone writes their password on a sticky note.

Eh, a sticky note is pretty darn secure for the kinds of attacks you care about. If your attack vector is someone breaking into your office the security game changes completely.

> If your attack vector is someone breaking into your office the security game changes completely.

There are at least two other important attack vectors against "sticky notes": accidental sharing through photographs and/or online meeting cameras, and visitors memorizing visible passwords. Both are defeated by hiding the sticky note below the keyboard, but my guess is that most people leave it visible on the monitor bezel.

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