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Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

blog.danielh.cc

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Re: Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

#681

Post by kbolino »

daneel_w wrote: post #670
efilife wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the "correct horse battery staple" advice silly?

Using memorable passphrases online is always a bad option because they're easily broken with a dictionary attack, unless you bump the number of words to the point where it becomes hard to remember the phrase. Use long strings of random characters instead, and contain the use of passphrases to unlocking your password manager.

To wit, each word drawn from a 10,000-word dictionary adds about 13 bits of entropy. At 4 words, you have (a little over) 52 bits of entropy, which is roughly equivalent to a 9-character alphanumeric (lower and upper) password. The going recommendation is 14 such characters, which would mean you'd need about 7 words.

Re: Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

#683

Post by kbolino »

charcircuit wrote: post #456
kbolino wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passkeys have several advantages over passwords but not all of them rely on UX controls. They are, after all, public-private keypairs and the private part is never shared during authentication. The wider web never adopted PAKEs so passwords are still sent verbatim over the (TLS-protected) wire.

With password managers passwords are not reused which avoids this problem already.

Not reusing passwords across sites greatly limits the blast radius but verbatim password exchange still carries its own risks. The widespread adoption of TLS addressed most of the issues, as I alluded to already, but there are still insider threats, MITM phishers, and infrastructure compromises from time to time.

Re: Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

#684

Post by qingcharles »

browningstreet wrote: post #427

I just deleted my gofundme because they kicked me into this cycle today. Somehow I've managed to have an account there and make contributions over the years, but now they wanted my phone number and an MFA code to proceed, and there was no opt-out. I went through it but then deactivated my account. I need less of this in my life, and gofuneme is not essential to my life. I'm in the rental market right now, and Zillow…

Google turned on 2FA on my account themselves, but the phone number on the account is outdated, so I was permanently locked out.

Re: Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

#685

Post by qingcharles »

abustamam wrote: post #483
t_mann wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems of Passkeys are more nuanced than just losing access when a device is lost (which actually doesn't need to happen depending on your setup). The biggest problem are attestations, which let services block users who use tools that give them more freedom. Passkeys, or more generally challenge-response protocols, could easily have been an amazing replacement for passwords and a win-win for everyone. Unfortuna…

I want to like passkeys but I haven't had any success getting them to work. Every time I click on "sign in using passkey" both my browser (Firefox or Chrome, on Android/Win/Mac) and Bitwarden are like "no passkeys found" and I'm never given an option to create one. I feel like I'm doing something stupidly wrong or missing a prompt somewhere, or maybe UX is just shitty everywhere, but if I, a millennial who grew up pr…

I've found passkeys support on Windows to be a bit janky right now. You can get into weird scenarios where the passkeys don't work, but there's also no UI to remove them or reset them. This is especially annoying when you change out some component in your PC and it seems to void however they are encrypted and Windows can't figure out why it can't access them.

It's too early for grandma to use, IMO.

Re: Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

#686

Post by daneel_w »

kbolino wrote: post #681
daneel_w wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using memorable passphrases online is always a bad option because they're easily broken with a dictionary attack, unless you bump the number of words to the point where it becomes hard to remember the phrase. Use long strings of random characters instead, and contain the use of passphrases to unlocking your password manager.

To wit, each word drawn from a 10,000-word dictionary adds about 13 bits of entropy. At 4 words, you have (a little over) 52 bits of entropy, which is roughly equivalent to a 9-character alphanumeric (lower and upper) password. The going recommendation is 14 such characters, which would mean you'd need about 7 words.

The average person will create a passphrase from their personal dictionary of most-used words, amounting to a fraction of that. An attacker will start in the same way. Another problem with passphrases is that you'll have a hard time remembering more than a couple of them, and which phrase goes to what website.

Re: Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

#687

Post by daneel_w »

kbolino wrote: post #678
daneel_w wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peppering is for protecting self-contained password hashes in case they leak. It's a secondary salt meant to be situated 1) external to the hash, and 2) external to the storage component the hashes reside in (i.e. not in the database you store accounts and hashes in). The method has nothing to do with trying to fix anything with bcrypt. You should be peppering your input even if you use Argon2.

Right, but peppering was not part of my comment. You can't always pepper, and there are different ways to do it. It's (mostly) orthogonal to the matter. You do not have to do any transformations on the input when using Argon2, while you must transform the input before using bcrypt. This was, again, an unnecessary and dangerous (careless) design choice.

I don't understand your responses here. Clearly you are not familiar with what problem peppering solves, or why it's a recommended practice, no matter what self-contained password hashing you use. bcrypt, scrypt, Argon2; they are all subject to the same recommendation because they all store their salt together with the digest. You can always use a pepper, you should always use a pepper, and there's only one appropriate way to do it.

Re: Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

#688

Post by avodonosov »

Hackbraten wrote: post #590
avodonosov wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are common properties of phycology shared by people. UI design and ergonomics rely on such properties. In psrticular, how people read text. But I am speaking of myself only. From experience receiving well designed message comparing to the experience with badly designed messages. I am a data point of evidence supporing my view. The opinion that "people don't read" is a complete speculation, without convincing ev…

OP’s claim was not that “people don’t read.” It was that “[t]hey only read what they need to finish what they are currently trying to do.” Those are two different claims.

Ok. When they need the code they will have to scan through a message like

    Do not share the code 3456
and will read the words, because they read left to right.

The code should be in the same font as the rest of the text.

Re: Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

#689

Post by dabeeeenster »

StillBored wrote: post #214

And there is _NOTHING_ worse than being locked out of an account because without asking they reverse the password and second factor authentication while your traveling and don't have access to a phone/etc. Nevermind. that pretty much all services treat the second factor as more secure than my 20 character random password saved in a local password safe. And those second factors are, lets see, plain text over SMS, plai…

What percentage of people reuse the same password as opposed to use a password manager?

Re: Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords

#690

Post by internetter »

FabHK wrote: post #202
internetter wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is going to bite me in the ass 15 years from now but like bcrypt is really really hard to screw up

Latacora, 2018: In order of preference, use scrypt, argon2, bcrypt, and then if nothing else is available PBKDF2. So even 7 years ago bcrypt was only the 3rd recommended option.

You'll find that opinion is still divided among these three options. And bcrypt is harder to mess up. It has less parameters (it doesn't fall apart as easy) and salting is built in, whereas its not for scrypt and argon2. If, knowing nothing else about the competency of the programmer, I had to choose between an application using scrypt, argon2 and bcrypt, I'd pick bcrypt any day.
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