51–60 of 152 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Let's say they have all of the passwords stored as bcrypt hashes, and they also know the last time you changed your password. They could just update the application logic to check that your password is of the form if your last change date is before X. Then to check the password, they just take the first half and check that against the hash.
"password123password123".match(/^(.+)\1$/)[1]
The fact that they're able to "double your password" is a bad sign. Here's what this implies to me: * McGill had a database of everyone's password in plaintext at the time of Heartbleed * McGill is concerned about mitigating possible security compromises due to Heartbleed, including these plaintext passwords, which if they were compromised were compromised all at once * Despite this concern, McGill still has a databa…
The McGill Password length has also been increased from exactly eight characters to a variable length of eight to 18 characters. So they're not using bcrypt (usable length 72). Even PBKDF2 would have been acceptable, but my guess is that they were sold a "layer over" on their stack with this. I can already tell this is a hacky patch. Every year, about 1,200 to 1,500 McGill accounts are compromised in one way or anoth…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can put a flag on the database and check that the cleartext you send them when logging in is doubled before hashing half of it. I can't count how many times I've seen something that could easily be done at login time and people conclude that the service must be storing plaintext or multiple hashes. This isn't even a direct security measure in the first place. This is to annoy people into updating their passwords…
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"111111111111".match(/^(.+)\1$/)[1]No, It does not mean that the password is stored as plaintext. Simply keep a flag for "UpdatedRecently?", if the flag is false, then not only should the first half of the input correctly match the hash, but the first half the input should match the second half.
The McGill Password length has also been increased from exactly eight characters to a variable length of eight to 18 characters. So they're not using bcrypt (usable length 72). Even PBKDF2 would have been acceptable, but my guess is that they were sold a "layer over" on their stack with this. I can already tell this is a hacky patch. Every year, about 1,200 to 1,500 McGill accounts are compromised in one way or anoth…
They may be artificially limiting the password length because other services which authenticate (e.g. VPNs, mail systems, older UNIX logins, administrative software, payroll, etc.) may have limits on password input fields.
You never want to convey any information about the usernames, password, or state of the account _ever_. This is true for error messages during login, but can be applied to any messaging.
The fact that they're able to "double your password" is a bad sign. Here's what this implies to me: * McGill had a database of everyone's password in plaintext at the time of Heartbleed * McGill is concerned about mitigating possible security compromises due to Heartbleed, including these plaintext passwords, which if they were compromised were compromised all at once * Despite this concern, McGill still has a databa…
I don't think that's necessarily true. Let's say they have all of the passwords stored as bcrypt hashes, and they also know the last time you changed your password. They could just update the application logic to check that your password is of the form if your last change date is before X. Then to check the password, they just take the first half and check that against the hash.