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Why not just display a single character out of a changing set of characters such as / - \ | (starting with a random one from the set) after every character entered? That way you can be certain whether or not you entered a character but and observer can‘t tell how many characters your password has.
Because that's still weird and confusing to people and still serves no purpose.
> That way you can be certain whether or not you entered a character
> sudo password is the same as their login password — one that already appears as visible placeholder dots on the graphical login screen. Hiding asterisks in the terminal while showing them at login is, in the developers’ estimation, security theatre. So hide the first one as well? But also, that's not true, not all terminal passwords are for local machine > Confusing — appears frozen So make it appear flashing? Stil…
Good. It's terrible UX. The security argument is a red herring. It was originally built with no echo because it was easier to turn echo on and off than to echo asterisks. Not for security.
Because to hell with UX when it comes to security. Knowing the exact length of a password absolutely makes it significantly less secure, and knowing the timing of the keystrokes doubly so.
I've been using a two character password since the last 10 years of my 23 year linux usage; I log in to console and manually start X. Guess the shame will catch up now.
It's fun, leading edge Linux distros (e.g. GNOME OS) are actually currently removing `sudo` completely in favour of `run0` from systemd, which fixes this "properly" by using Polkit & transient systemd units instead of setuid binaries like sudo. You get a UAC-style prompt, can even auth with your fingerprint just like on other modern OSes. Instead of doing this, Ubuntu is just using a Rust rewrite of sudo. Some things…
Is "GNOME OS" really a leading distro?
It's fun, leading edge Linux distros (e.g. GNOME OS) are actually currently removing `sudo` completely in favour of `run0` from systemd, which fixes this "properly" by using Polkit & transient systemd units instead of setuid binaries like sudo. You get a UAC-style prompt, can even auth with your fingerprint just like on other modern OSes. Instead of doing this, Ubuntu is just using a Rust rewrite of sudo. Some things…
> sudo password is the same as their login password — one that already appears as visible placeholder dots on the graphical login screen. Hiding asterisks in the terminal while showing them at login is, in the developers’ estimation, security theatre. So hide the first one as well? But also, that's not true, not all terminal passwords are for local machine > Confusing — appears frozen So make it appear flashing? Stil…
Why not just display a single character out of a changing set of characters such as / - \ | (starting with a random one from the set) after every character entered? That way you can be certain whether or not you entered a character but and observer can‘t tell how many characters your password has.
What's the benefit of having a random character from a random set, instead of just a random character?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> easier to turn echo on and off than to echo asterisks. One implies the other. You turn echo off. Then you write asterisks. > Not for security. Consider the case of copy and pasting parts of your terminal to build instructions or to share something like a bug report. Or screen sharing in general. You are then leaking the length of your password. This isn't necessarily disastrous for most use cases but it is a negati…
Leaking the length of your password is about as bad for security as leaking the fact that you have a password, or that you use sudo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because that's still weird and confusing to people and still serves no purpose.
Purpose: > That way you can be certain whether or not you entered a character
They can also count the number of keystrokes they heard.