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Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

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Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#151

Post by plorkyeran »

zenethian wrote: post #23
gzread wrote: post #7

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.

You got some sources or did you just make that up? 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.

Bad security UX that results in users bypassing security mechanisms entirely is probably the single biggest source of real-world security problems.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#152

Post by stevetron »

So now there's a few additional steps when I install a new distribution to make certain that classic sudo is the one installed, rather than sudo-rs

I'm sure someone things this is a good idea, but I do not, and nobody cares what I think. But I come from being a long-time coder who's always been a terrible typist and can't depend on "touch typing" and have to actually look at things, like the keys, and the screen. And handicapped by going blind in one eye, and having arguments with eye doctors who say "get used to it and switch to audio books" and needing 14-point boldface fonts for everything.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#153

Post by NiloCK »

ordu wrote: post #112
NiloCK wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no persistent reveal of password length after you're finished typing. It reduces the length-reveal leak from anyone who eventually sees the terminal log to people who are actively over-the-shoulder as you type it.

If you can see 1 char from set of 4 you know the number of characters modulo 4. If the minimum length of a password is 6, and probably it is no longer than 12 characters, then you can narrow the length to 1 or 2 numbers. It is marginally better than asterisks of course, of course, but it is still confusing.

The original suggestion included randomizing the first character of the set, which removes this attack.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#155

Post by the_real_cher »

opan wrote: post #139
jiehong wrote: post #127

This fixes another issue with that if you make a typo in your password, you don't know how many characters you need to delete, but now you would.

I find it's usually faster to hit ctrl-u and start over anyway.

That's been my solution too and it's never been an issue for me tbh.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#156

Post by seba_dos1 »

sourcegrift wrote: post #149
sourcegrift wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly everyone wants convenience. Nobody hates MS because they are bad, they hate them because they are inconvenient. People are missing the fact that Google is exactly where MS was in the 90s and is most definitely as bad if not worse. I hate android sadly linux isn't looking too good rigt now on mobile. Devs are are missing the point with linux on phone. Get the point part working first lol so that people have some…

* phone part

The phone part has been working for decades now; I know cause I've been relying on it for nearly 20 years now on various devices.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#158

Post by the_real_cher »

b0ringdeveloper wrote: post #150

Someone should make a joke version that replaces the ***s with comedic passwords or ridiculously bad ones: When you're typing your real password, "iloveyouiloveyou", "12345612345", or "hunter42hunter.." gets printed to the screen.

I would absolutely install this.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#159

Post by the_real_cher »

goodcanadian wrote: post #88

Fascinating . . . reading the comments, it seems like the vast majority think this is a long overdue change. For myself, it never occurred to me that there was any issue and I'm slightly unsettled by the change (i.e. it is far from obvious to me that it's a good thing). It is not something I've thought deeply about, of course.

Just so you know. I feel the same way!

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#160

Post by mikkupikku »

themafia wrote: post #119
mikkupikku wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One implies the other. You turn echo off. Then you write asterisks. That's not how it works. Sudo turns off echo but otherwise keeps the terminal in it's normal cooked canonocal mode, meaning sudo only sees what you've entered after you hit enter. To print asteriks as you type requires putting the terminal in raw mode, which has the addition consequence of needing to implement shit like backspace yourself. Still a…

You're correct, but, the echo and canonical mode flags are literally in the same termios structure member. One is no more complicated to change than the other. You can also easily switch to character at a time read() which makes handling backspace, erase or kill exceedingly simple. I still doubt the claim the scheme employed by sudo was done because it "was easier."

The first is like 3 lines of code, to get the attrs, disable the echo flag then set the attrs again. The second is.. I don't know probably about twenty lines of code to handle the primitive line editing yourself and also asterisk printing. In my view, this is enough of a difference to motivate a conclusion that the first is good enough. Also note that this decision was made back in the early 70s when login was first implemented, and it established a convention which was very easy and convienent to carry forward to su and later sudo.
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