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Password Security Not Easy
mekkab writes "The Wall Street Journal reports (yet again) that despite knowing better, users do dumb things to compromise security. Is seven different 8 character passwords (with numbers and mixed cases) really too much to ask? Do people need training on how to make well known phrase (to them) into a perfect password acronym, or other memory boosting techniques? Or is it that the entire business culture needs to change from within to take digital security seriously?" If you require unmemorizable passwords, you've effectively changed the security requirement from "something you know" to "something you have", and if the required dongle is a note under your keyboard...
required dongle is a note under your keyboard
There are more advanced security schemas. I know some places I have worked use securids where if you get possession of the key chain and know their userid, then you can become them. This isn't any good.
A little bit better solution is having a securid login with a pin code - still not quite there as I only have to get your login name, secuid key chain and guess what your 4 digit pin is.
The best password schema I have seen so far is where the securid and pin are integrated so that the seed in the random number generator for synced securids is the pin - the securids are just random numbers where the next number is based on some fixed patter and the number is only good for 60 seconds. But this still this has a few holes, I could figure out the pattern in securid and brute force the pin then re-add the pin as the seed. But for nowadays, this is best I have.
2 passwords, none of them are words, easy to remember. anyone else have a few standard passwords?
Asking users to learn to create and manage complex passwords is not realistic; user education and/or "awareness" just isn't all that viable. The way the password problem is going to be solved is very simple - they aren't going to be used anymore.
Using SecureID or another similar solution is the "no-brainer" solution that todays users need. This way they don't have to remember anything other than a simple pin - which, luckily, is just about the limit of most peoples' powers in this arena.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
I hate people that put their password under their keyboard. Like damn people, on the underside of the desk, is that so much to ask.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
No matter how complex our security systems get, no matter how secure we can encrypt passwords to prevent brute force cracking of them, there will always be that human element of weakness. There will always be that one person who can be easily tricked over the phone to give out a password. There will always be that one person who will use their first name and last initial (ahem...half life 2 forum admin) as their password. So we really can't get top notch security without excellent education to these people on what to do in these situations.
I can't remember how may IT admins thought by requiring a password with special characters and numbers would make the system more secure. Sure it will add an extra 12 hours on a brute force attack, but if you don't notice a 8 hour running brute force attack you really are not a good admin.
... then at least a person has to gain physical access to the machine before they can compromise your account. Of course, we all know that once a person has physical access to the machine, all bets are off anyway.
It isn't as good as memorizing the password, but it's a hell of a lot better than having a weak password that is trivial to guess and compromise via the Internet.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
My password is weu@$9JKcpw34.
No one has ever guessed it.
Best password/pin ever:
[King Roland has given in to Dark Helmet's threats, and is telling him the combination to the "air shield"]
King Roland: One.
Dark Helmet: One.
Colonel Sandurz: One.
King Roland: Two.
Dark Helmet: Two.
Colonel Sandurz: Two.
King Roland: Three.
Dark Helmet: Three.
Colonel Sandurz: Three.
King Roland: Four.
Dark Helmet: Four.
Colonel Sandurz: Four.
King Roland: Five.
Dark Helmet: Five.
Colonel Sandurz: Five.
Dark Helmet: So the combination is one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard! That's the kind of combination an idiot would put on his luggage!
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Low: content sites like slashdot. I don't care if you get this passphrase, I will never change it.
Medium: logins for machine accounts, email and online shopping sites. I care somewhat if this is known, and I will change it yearly.
High: financial sites - bank and brokerage. I care deeply that this phrase is secure, and it is changed once a month no matter what.
You'll be surprised by how dramatically your capacity to remember passwords will improve once this becomes a regular feature of your workday.
For added effect, construct horribly complex and impossible to remember passwords a few times every day. Over time, basic survival instincts and the urge to avoid the inevitable kick in the balls will overcome the limitations posed by your poor memory.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Between Moore's Law and modern cracking techniques (dictionary attacks, hybrid attacks using both dictionary and brute force, and hash precalculation), nearly any 7-8 character password that will be easy for Joe User to remember is crackable in a very short period of time. Rather than blaming the users for security failure, we should be looking to improving the overall system.
There are a number of things that can be done. First, and most importantly, eliminate the use of protocols that pass usable credentials (password, reversable password hashes, etc.) across the network in the clear. This means no longer using telnet and FTP (except for kerberized versions), doing something with/about Microsoft's NTLM/LanMan hashes, and probably using client certificates as well as server certs for encrypted web traffic.
Beyond that, there are proven techniques that aren't too hard for users to understand. Time sequence tokens (i.e. RSA's SecurID) have been around for a long time and have yet to be broken except for when the attacker has access to the critical seed records. There was an article a while back (sorry, can't remember where) about a bank using a short list of PINs that they mail to the customers. Each time the customer logs in, they use one and cross it off. The system keeps track of it and automatically send a new list before the old one is exhausted.
The point here is that unless we get rid of the users, we will never be able to educate all users all the time. The best way to get the security levels that appear to be needed is to take the human element out of the process as much as possible.
Passwords are always going to be flawed. Biometrics are the wave of the near future/present.
Yeah. Unlike password biometrics are resistant to, what, 10 replay attacks? Unless you're using iris-scans, then you've got 2 passwords, maximum.
You are aware that most fingerprinting gear is resistant to the dreaded Gummy Bear attack? (That's where they us a copy of your prints - lifted off of a glass you used for example - mad out of Gummy Bear candies).
Biometrics are useless unless the biometric-taking hardware is physically secured by human guards checking to make sure you're not palming any Gummy Bears.
(As a cost-cutting measure, notice how human guards are much better at facial recognition than computers, and just issue photo-IDs..)
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
There should be some feature in slashcode to remind people who inevitably try to post this that as soon as someone can fake your fingerprint or retinal scan, you are forked for life because you can never change those things.
One method I like is to pick a simple figure: a wavy line, a j shape, a box, a star or whatever. Then pick a starting character and 'draw' the password on the keyboard. For example, lets use a wavy line and start on e. Our 8 character pasword would be e4rft6yj. Or a box starting on f: fr456yhg. These passwords are hard to guess, easy to remember, easy to make memorable variants of, and quick to type.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hard to guess, easy for me to "remember". If someone gets my paper (say I lose my wallet), it is still not simple to figure out what my passwords are, or even what the heck that little paper is. Shoulder surfing doesn't work too well either, unless you can memorize the whole card and then figure out which word I am using (it would be easier to try to watch me type the password on the keyboard then get it off the paper. Luckily I type fast and get annoyed when people stand over me while I type a password
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
What I've noticed lately is that it's stupid policies rather than stupid users that cause the problems.
For example, my current employer requires a monthly password change, minimum of 8 characters, one must be in caps, at least one number and one punctuation mark. 13 months worth of history is also kept.
I have 4 strong passwords that I use regularly (and I come up with new ones every year or so), each consisting of 16-25 random characters, numbers and punctuation (think pound the keyboard and select a bunch of characters from the result). I can't use them because they repeat too often.
The policies also prohibit using the same password multiple services like email, NT Domain logins, *nix servers, web applications and the like. The result is that I have to generate some 20 passwords per month.
What this does is force me to use stuff like "WebApp-01!", "NTLogin-01!" just to be able to remember everything.
I wish we'd switch to RADIUS.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
I used to be on the networks team at a very large corporation, where we implemented SecurID and PIN for offsite dial-in.
We did everything right, got the clock sync working, got all the managers to buy lots of pricey SecurID cards, found and forcibly removed insecure dial-in boxes scattered around, did all the right audit and test of firewalls, etc.
But the sales group had a bunch of pooled laptops, which sales people used to take out to customer sites. So they would store a SecurID card in the bag, along with a yellow PostIt note showing the PIN code for that SecurID.
That way, not only was the SecurID compromised, but since they were effectively using shared SecurIDs and PINs, we wouldn't even know which idjit sales droid had compromised it.
Doooo, ya stupid idjit rabbit!
State-of-the art tech is no match for the apparently limitless stupidity of users.
In the end, we did the only sensible thing, and revoked offsite dial-in for that group.
Lots easier to work with multiple places (home, work, web, etc.)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
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>p x% q 7M r NF
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So what does the output of that Perl script look like?
-- TheMadRedHatter
while(1)
{
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Ah, the story of life.