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Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

diogomonica.com

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Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#71
I am skeptical of the security of the self-organising map based scheme in the paper of his own (s)he links to in the article, despite the Fourier-transform based hash scheme.

For a start, the scheme requires all passwords to be stored in plain text (or with reversible encryption), or at least the DFT output for them, for the final adjustment of node popularity levels, which is itself a risk.

Given the self-organising map (which is supposedly safe to distribute widely), take the nodes which are flagged as the highest danger level (i.e. most widely used). For each of these nodes, you have the amplitude of the DFT, but not the phases. However, performing a brute force attack on the phase space is likely relatively easy, because it would normally be relatively small. An attacker could fix the values of all phases except one (phase_i), and then find, using the simplex algorithm, the next value of cos(phase_i) or sin(phase_i) that changes one of the time-domain values to round to the next output value. For each value of phase_i, the attacker then recursively repeats the attack for phase_{i+1}, until all passwords for the amplitude vector on the node are enumerated.

These passwords are then used to brute force attack the system. If one password is extremely common in the SOM, that common password should be in the resulting list.

Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And may be Square should let him go as well?

If he's working at Square as a security researcher and routinely did work of this caliber, I would be surprised. While this wasn't a good article about security, for what may be any of several reasons that don't have anything to do with his work relationship with Square or qualifications in general, I'm not childish enough to pretend that a single bad article dictates even his merit as a security professional. We've…

Agreed. Square would be in best position to take that call and he might be very good at his work there. Hence my comment above was a question rather than a suggestion.

That said, this article doesn't seem to be a tongue in cheek thing. He is the lead security researcher at a payment processing company. A critical position I believe.

I am not sure if such a person can afford to have written that article where people who are not security researcher can easily find conceptual flaws.

Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#73

This article includes some good points, but puts them together into something inane. It's true that silly constraints lead to trivial changes that lead to crackable passwords. It's also true that assuming brute force over all character classes included in a password is wrong. Those are precisely what the "correct horse battery staple" comic was getting at. Picking words at random (that is, based on a PRNG - not "rand…

His primary point is that people should not be choosing passwords at all , and should instead use a password manager, except for a select few passwords such as logins for computer and phone, and the password manager master password itself. Yes, the correct horse battery staple has more entropy than most common passwords, but the point is that we don't need a way of generating better memorable passwords. We can alread…

I don't disagree with that primary point, but the "except..." is plenty of reason for recommending good mechanisms for password selection.

Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#74
post #37

This article includes some good points, but puts them together into something inane. It's true that silly constraints lead to trivial changes that lead to crackable passwords. It's also true that assuming brute force over all character classes included in a password is wrong. Those are precisely what the "correct horse battery staple" comic was getting at. Picking words at random (that is, based on a PRNG - not "rand…

> The other odd point is that we shouldn't be advocating stronger methods of choosing passwords because we should be using multifactor authentication. I don't dispute that we should be using multifactor authentication in more places, but even in that case weak passwords are a problem! Only he never says that weak passwords are OK. Instead he says that we should not let people decide them, and instead use a uniformly…

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Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#75
post #37

This article includes some good points, but puts them together into something inane. It's true that silly constraints lead to trivial changes that lead to crackable passwords. It's also true that assuming brute force over all character classes included in a password is wrong. Those are precisely what the "correct horse battery staple" comic was getting at. Picking words at random (that is, based on a PRNG - not "rand…

> The other odd point is that we shouldn't be advocating stronger methods of choosing passwords because we should be using multifactor authentication. I don't dispute that we should be using multifactor authentication in more places, but even in that case weak passwords are a problem! Only he never says that weak passwords are OK. Instead he says that we should not let people decide them, and instead use a uniformly…

That is precisely what "correct horse battery staple" suggests, over an alphabet that is more memorable per bit of entropy.

Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#76
post #51

You have to be pragmatic with users and offer them a path of least resistance while implementing a greater level of security. I've only recently been able to get users to pay attention to why they need a password manager - the iCloud hack helped more in that than even Snowden did. That path of least resistance right now, I find, is installing a password manager and securing it with a primary password that is generate…

I agree with most of this. I do think it's worth stressing the point periodically that "random" in "four random words" needs to be "picked by a computer", not "picked arbitrarily by a human" - humans aren't nearly as good at randomness as we think, even when that's what we're trying for.

Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#77
post #50
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in places with those kinds of rules I can tell you most of those passwords is written down. At one government shop we did an audit and found the longer and and better a password is (and the faster it expires), the more likely users will write it down. Not only that, 70% of them put the written down password in their top right desk drawer . We also found a large percentage of our fancy two person authent…

No offence, but if your not going to fire people when you find their password written down then there going to write their password down. Written policies are practically irrelevant it's enforced policies people pay attention to. One example of security. Someone (A) giving a breafing has someone (B) grabs at it so they can read the document. At which point (A) pulls his sidearm and threatens (B). Later (A) is given a…

It doesn't matter if you fire people. You're not going to catch the vast majority of them, and they know it.

Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#78

For what it's worth, the horse battery staple is completely correct for the problem it's trying to solve. This article is about another (arguably more important) problem.

Exactly. Ironically it's good advice for master passwords too. I use a password manager, but we should recognise there is one prominent issue with them, in that they create a single point of failure. The article suggests that the strength of algorithms like scrypt will keep you safe, but that doesn't stop low tech hacking methods (key loggers, shoulder surfing, etc...). We should be looking at using master passwords…

And possibly a handful of master passwords (and handful of dongles) of various levels of security. I'd rather not unlock my bank info every time I want to log into facebook.

Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#79
On reflection, there's a way you can force users to use "something like a password manager" - don't accept a password; instead have them prove they hold a specific private key (and allow multiple, so they can revoke specific devices). This would seem to be a win on all counts over a password manager. The only thing it breaks hard is backwards compatibility, but if using individual passwords per site is so broken then that's not something we really want to permit anyway.

Re: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct

#80
post #77
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offence, but if your not going to fire people when you find their password written down then there going to write their password down. Written policies are practically irrelevant it's enforced policies people pay attention to. One example of security. Someone (A) giving a breafing has someone (B) grabs at it so they can read the document. At which point (A) pulls his sidearm and threatens (B). Later (A) is given a…

It doesn't matter if you fire people. You're not going to catch the vast majority of them, and they know it.

From what you said earlier you can catch 70% of them pretty easy.
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