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Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

tailscale.com

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Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#241
Something related that's barely touched in the post:

Bad UX is potential security vulnerability. If your system behaves in unreasonable ways, users are much less likely to notice when it behaves in a slightly different unreasonable way, this time because of a spoofing/phishing, etc.

The obvious example: if your system frequently asks for passwords, re-entering passwords becomes a habit (read system one from "thinking fast and slow"), and the user is less likely to use judgement each time they enter the password.

But also, if an OS makes it hard to find all startup applications, allows untrusted code to run in the background without any visible signs, allows terminal code to access all local files by default, etc etc these all can be abused.

One problem is that human psychology is rarely considered as important a factor as it should be by the average security expert. The other is the usual suspect: incentives. The right chain of responsibilities is missing when things go wrong for people because of mistakes that would be avoidable by proper product design.

Regulation should enforce that, but while everyone would benefit from regulation, no one likes the regulation that will regulate the product/services they offer, and the supplier has upper hand when a change in regulation is being considered because they are focused and motivated.

Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#242
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No modern IT organization mandates periodical password changes since, I dunno, mid-2000's. edit : please note the "modern" qualifier, tons of IT orgs continue to mandate this anachronistic policy, sure, but those orgs aren't modern, the policy isn't a requirement for e.g. SOC2 or whatever, it's purely historical inertia.

My Microsoft account is definitely bothersome like this. I never searched for the root cause (tenant policies? some default value somewhere?), but I have to refresh my password every 4 months or so.

Every four months? If only. I’m required to do it every 30 days for a number of systems. The good ones are every 90 days.

Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#243

I hate Apple products for this. I see this pattern across all apple products - not one. On my mac, I setup my touch ID, and log in to my Apple account on the App Store. Time and again, when I try to install apps, it keeps repeatedly prompting for my password, instead of letting me just use my touchID. This applies to free apps as well, which is again silly beyond what is already enough silliness. I briefly see this o…

The really annoying thing is that when I purchase an app on my watch, it makes me type the password on my watch...

How is this a thing?!

Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." -Jeff Hammerbacher

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix

How is that supposed to make anyone click on an ad?

Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#245

The MFA is getting out of control too. Go to vendor's tool/website, which uses some SSO method and redirects/prompts me to login with the SSO provider. Authenticate to SSO providers, which requires an MFA. Redirects me back to the vendor's tool/website, which prompts for its own MFA. And the vendor's tool's configuration has a security setting that requires all accounts to have MFA, even if they are authenticated via…

I need to use SSO with MFA for something. So I sign in.

Every once in a while, the token attached to that somehow expires. Which means that once I have successfully signed in (but before doing MFA) I am redirected to a DIFFERENT SSO system.

I get to login to that and enter its MFA code.

Having now completed all security requirements. I get to enter the MFA code for the original SSO.

Double SSO. Double MFA.

Boy don’t we feel secure.

Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#246

Finally someone said it. This is a relic from when a row in a database table for a session id cost about $400. I'm joking of course but that's what literally was on the mind of early internet engineers. The only company that fights this is Google and apparently tailscale.

Microsoft does too. And Apple (but they’re not big in enterprise, of course).

Unfortunately lots of compliance people/orgs don’t seem to want to give it up.

Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#247
post #63

The people who need to read these articles are the auditors. Until they change their expectations, the many businesses who have to pass audits are still going to be stuck doing a lot of things that are industry-standard but also very stupid. This is the case even for small businesses in certain fields where security audits are valued. We have at least half a dozen measures in place that we know aren't actually helpfu…

I've been pushing NIST on SOC2 auditors for years. They always accept it once given a link.

Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#248

Wouldn't frequent reauth be beneficial for stolen sessions? E.g. If you set your session timeouts to a ~1 day then by the time your session cookies are up for sale on the dark web, they will be expired. The article doesn't mention this and it's the main reason I advocate for auth sessions that are as short as practical.

If your session cookies were stolen, they can be stolen again and again too? Timeouts of 1 day assumes the cookies can only be stolen once.

[dead]

Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#249

I hate how prevalent it has become and it's getting even worse. One company that is buying our product has enforced SSO in theirs installation, making access_token lifetime of 15 seconds and refresh_token 4 minutes. For those unaware of OIDC/OAuth/SSO terminology, basically it means "if you lost access to internet for 4 minutes, invalidate your session, invalidate everything, make user go to auth, pick up 2fa, input…

15 seconds?

I’ve never heard of anything like that. The recommendation I’ve always seen is 15 minutes.

Seems like you could quickly run afoul of that just from a spotty Internet connection.

Re: Frequent reauth doesn't make you more secure

#250
post #31

My problem is that there is a reauth FOMA that gets copied with the most trivial of applications. A good example is the Electrify America charging app. It's job is to be available so you can charge. But they log you out frequently - and they want to do second factor with email. Guess what - that doesn't always work. My wife was trying to charge the other day, was logged out, and couldn't get the email verification to…

I don’t need to charge often, but I’m logged out of every single one of my charging apps for that reason. They kick me out constantly.

If you want me to auth to make a payment when starting a session, fine. I’ll hate you, but whatever.

Nope. Can’t even get into the app. Want to see where their stations are? Too bad. Sign up, sign in, or hit guest mode and prepare to be annoyed.

I can stay signed into Amazon with a credit card set up for years at a time.

God forbid I ever want to charge a car.

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