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Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

help.jetblue.com

91–100 of 221 posts

Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#91
post #20

I'd caution against making assumptions about the competence of the developers based only what you can see from the outside. More likely than not there are good reasons to maintain interoperability with legacy systems. This may well be the most elegant way to solve a complex problem. I've certainly written my share of code that would look weird to an outsider who didn't know the backstory and the constraints and the e…

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Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#92
post #22
post #20

I'd caution against making assumptions about the competence of the developers based only what you can see from the outside. More likely than not there are good reasons to maintain interoperability with legacy systems. This may well be the most elegant way to solve a complex problem. I've certainly written my share of code that would look weird to an outsider who didn't know the backstory and the constraints and the e…

In this case, a legacy system (Sabre) whose origins predate the integrated circuit. I'm sure a lot has changed since then, but it's a bit scary to wonder what hasn't .

I doubt that the passwords come from SABRE. There is a lot of stuff between the front end and SABRE. I expect Jet Blue manages their own systems that only call SABRE internally.

Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#93

Question to all those saying this is because of Sabre: How? Does the TrueBlue password somehow go through Sabre's systems? The truly old business unit of Sabre that everyone is referencing is Travel Network. I'm not sure why an airline's loyalty program would intersect with Travel Network other than through the back end of a booking tool.

No, there is no way their loyalty program has anything to do with SABRE, any more than Expedia's passwords are stored in SABRE.

Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#94
post #80

Why people are still restricting password complexity. As long as passwords are carefully & cryptographically processed (read hashed with individual salt). I recently designed a system where the only password policy is the length (8 char minimum) and they are stored hashed with salt being a specially encoded user id (thus unique for each user). I also like to contradict myself. Password complexity and and all the poli…

I consider passwords as random blobs of bytes. Everyone says that hashing is important but I don't see any real benefit of it. If I hash random 128 bits result is random 128 bits.

Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#95
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you map them to something like: Q = ABDHCJSKJDHSSS Z = YYYDUHUHUHSSYS ... to avoid weakening the password.

I can't tell if you're joking or not, but for the benefit of people who don't know any better: such a scheme would not meaningfully impact the strength of the password storage scheme at all. (To prove it to yourself, think about how rainbow tables work. Then consider how little additional work would be required to replace all Q's and Z's with the appropriate string before making the table. It's not much different fro…

Actually, it's a classic case of security through obscurity. If the attacker doesn't know about it and are using a standard rainbow table, then no, it's not going to have "ABDHCJSKJDHSSS" in there and it will make their life harder. Once they do find out, though, it's useless.

Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#96
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can't stand passwords sent as part of a welcome email, this does not actually mean that they store the passwords in plaintext. Often, companies will send the username and password as part of a welcome email upon the user registering (and the above screenshots look exactly like that). This does not preclude the company from then hashing the password and storing it hashed. That said, it still is a terrible prac…

Oh yeah. It's impossible to know who has your plaintext password on the backend (even steam who RSA encrypts your pw with a public key before sending), but this certainly is a bad practice and certainly makes it look like they do not have robust security practices.

If you use the "forget password" link and receive your old password by email, then they more then likely have your plain-text password unless they crack it on the fly?

Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#97

That's ok, here's a better one. etrade - yeah, THAT etrade? Yeah. They make your passwords case-insensitive.

That's nothing. Until late 2000, eTrade stored your password, caeser-ciphered, in a cookie in your browser.

Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#98
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may well be the most elegant way to solve a complex problem. It seems to me that these silly, arbitrary restrictions on password lengths and contents are far too common to explain or excuse in this way. The full list of JetBlue's password restrictions looks very much like the restrictions at a zillion other sites. The "no Q or Z" thing is strikingly weird, but its probably less harmful than the (very common) low…

What if the legacy system underneath IS the hashing system?

Nothing stopping you from hashing more than once.

Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#99
post #80

Why people are still restricting password complexity. As long as passwords are carefully & cryptographically processed (read hashed with individual salt). I recently designed a system where the only password policy is the length (8 char minimum) and they are stored hashed with salt being a specially encoded user id (thus unique for each user). I also like to contradict myself. Password complexity and and all the poli…

I consider passwords as random blobs of bytes. Everyone says that hashing is important but I don't see any real benefit of it. If I hash random 128 bits result is random 128 bits.

It's important because if somebody gets your database, if you haven't hashed, they have everybody's passwords, and those passwords are often reused many times at many sites. Hashing at least puts a step between stealing your table and knowing everybody's passwords (a mathematically hard step for good passwords).

Also, please let me know what sites you manage so I know where my data is not valued.

Re: Passwords for JetBlue accounts cannot contain a Q or a Z

#100
post #96
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah. It's impossible to know who has your plaintext password on the backend (even steam who RSA encrypts your pw with a public key before sending), but this certainly is a bad practice and certainly makes it look like they do not have robust security practices.

If you use the "forget password" link and receive your old password by email, then they more then likely have your plain-text password unless they crack it on the fly?

If you receive your old password then yes, they do have it stored in plaintext. Usually these days forgotten password pages just ask you to create a new one, but if they don't that's a sure sign.
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