Live data from Hacker News

Safari tries to fill username

github.com

271–280 of 393 posts

Re: Safari tries to fill username

#271
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful. Filling out a long form isn’t 15 minutes of inactivity, but a huge range of websites assume it is.

Ugh, a form that takes 15 minutes or more to fill out, without any feedback or other interaction, is itself a UX problem. It should at least be auto-saving.

More likely it will have a “submit” button that runs a script that blocks submission wen you missed a field. And wipes out a couple of other fields (usually passwords) so that you have to re-enter those after hitting that “submit” button again.

Re: Safari tries to fill username

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to support a client facing app at a bank and the appsec pentesters were a joke: * Username and Password fields must not autocomplete * Username and Password fields must not allow text to be pasted in to the field * Password must be at least 8 characters with lower case, upper case, numbers, and special characters (they didn't care it had a maximum length of 8 characters) I straight up told our project manageme…

I am currently arguing with the bargain-basement pentesters one of our clients hired. They are claiming the system we built is vulnerable because, and I quote, “any credentials sent over HTTPS are transmitted in plain text until they leave the user’s local network”. Not sure how exactly they think HTTPS works, but five minutes on Wikipedia could debunk that one. They also flagged up that users can access JavaScript a…

That is dire. Almost as bad as the NCC reports we had for an old client.

Re: Safari tries to fill username

#273
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, enterprise "security" firms used by banks and other old behemoths are a cancer for users. If you want your website to actively abuse users (especially one with special needs and pretty much anyone that doesn't fit into an "made up average person mold") get those people on board and listen to the dumb things they say. I still can't believe that whole business managed to interpret 2FA for whole EU as "you MUST…

I use Coface for work to check credit for potential customers. Instead of a password, they require a 6-digit pin. It can't be auto-filled or entered with the keyboard. There's an on-screen number pad that you have to click on and the numbers are scrambled - they show up in a different arrangement every time. Such a pain!

Yeah. One of my banks uses something like this. Here's how it works:

The client can only use numerical passwords. When loading the login page, their site also loads the number pad, which consists in an HTML pad containing the 10 digits. The digits are displayed as base 64 images and in a random order, so it's impossible to determine which digit is which from parsing the HTML alone. In the HTML, the images of the digits are each associated to a random 3 letters string. This string will be sent to the server instead of the plain digit.

With the number pad, the site also load a "challenge", and this challenge is sent to the server when connecting. My guess is that this challenge is an encrypted string that indicates what digit corresponds to what 3 letters string.

I made a script that logs in to my bank account to get some information and I was able to do it without using OCR on the images of the number pad because the images never change, so their base 64 strings are always the same. I was a bit disappointed when I realized it, I thought that the people who came with such a twisted login form would have added random noise to the image, just for fun.

Re: Safari tries to fill username

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to support a client facing app at a bank and the appsec pentesters were a joke: * Username and Password fields must not autocomplete * Username and Password fields must not allow text to be pasted in to the field * Password must be at least 8 characters with lower case, upper case, numbers, and special characters (they didn't care it had a maximum length of 8 characters) I straight up told our project manageme…

I am currently arguing with the bargain-basement pentesters one of our clients hired. They are claiming the system we built is vulnerable because, and I quote, “any credentials sent over HTTPS are transmitted in plain text until they leave the user’s local network”. Not sure how exactly they think HTTPS works, but five minutes on Wikipedia could debunk that one. They also flagged up that users can access JavaScript a…

>any credentials sent over HTTPS are transmitted in plain text

Hummmm. So a couple of years back, I was working on some internal tools that passed sensitive information around and I found some interesting info.

Some bloggers INCORRECTLY thought that HTTPS didn't secure the URL Flags. Correct fact: parameters passed in the URL like ?item=bla is encrypted

Also, some cloud providers aload Balancers (AWS) allow you to offer load HTTPS encryption/decryption - so there REALLY IS plain text stuff in the final leg of the journey (e.g. from the LB to the server)

In the end, the biggest thing I learned is that HTTPS is hard and it sucks.

Re: Safari tries to fill username

#276
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taken to the extreme is the US Government's TreasuryDirect website, where individuals can buy savings bonds. Instead of allowing you to type your password, they render a "virtual keyboard" that you have to use your mouse to click the keys one by one. Oh, and that password? Not case sensitive.

> Oh, and that password? Not case sensitive. What, you expect them to make a case-sensitive version of NTFS just to store your password??

NTFS is case-sensitive.

Re: Safari tries to fill username

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share details?

Everyone loves CSS grid layout now, right? On Safari (both iOS and OS X) Safari does not support grid-gap, i.e. "gap" CSS property. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/gap#support... I use the fullscreen API to give prototype demos of a product to clients, and iOS [iPhone] Safari doesn't support the fullscreen API. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fullscreen_...

It’s supported grid gap (mostly) for ages. It was flex gap it didn’t support until very recently.

Re: Safari tries to fill username

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product I work on now logs users out after 15 minutes. It's a service where the average user would probably spend a good few hours of their day. We're actively harming the user experience (and driving paying customers away) because of some "expert" advice.

This one is based in security standards :( https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/45455/which-sec... (link talks about screen locking but similar vibe for app logout for various certification bodies)

At least this is based on "inactivity", compared to "authentication tokens must have a maximum lifespan of 15 minutes"

Re: Safari tries to fill username

#279
post #266

This is not really a Safari-only thing. All password managers that I have used in the past had some kind of heuristic to decide whether a field should be auto-filled or not. Here is a nice explanation by a (former?) 1Password employee ( https://1password.community/discussion/94198/autocomplete-of... ). To me as a web developer (among other things :D) this is quite annoying because password managers often hijack our f…

As well they should. I sometimes hate the password managers too as a web developer. I am also a 1Password user, and I hate sites that block clipboard, block pasting, block right click, basically block any kind of way I have to type even my username, not to mention annoying full size on screen keyboards that can only be used with the mouse. I don't care about the reason they have to be so intrusive in UX, probably som…

Automatic field detection is fine and good UX for password managers. What is bad is auto-fill without user action.

Re: Safari tries to fill username

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am currently arguing with the bargain-basement pentesters one of our clients hired. They are claiming the system we built is vulnerable because, and I quote, “any credentials sent over HTTPS are transmitted in plain text until they leave the user’s local network”. Not sure how exactly they think HTTPS works, but five minutes on Wikipedia could debunk that one. They also flagged up that users can access JavaScript a…

>any credentials sent over HTTPS are transmitted in plain text Hummmm. So a couple of years back, I was working on some internal tools that passed sensitive information around and I found some interesting info. Some bloggers INCORRECTLY thought that HTTPS didn't secure the URL Flags. Correct fact: parameters passed in the URL like ?item=bla is encrypted Also, some cloud providers aload Balancers (AWS) allow you to of…

> Some bloggers INCORRECTLY thought that HTTPS didn't secure the URL Flags. Correct fact: parameters passed in the URL like ?item=bla is encrypted

It’s still good practice to keep sensitive info out of URL query parameters, which often leak into server logs.

Post reply on HN