Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is Password Masking On Its Way Out?
New submitter thegreatbob writes: Perhaps you've noticed in the last 5 years or so, progressively more entities have been providing the ability to reveal the contents of a password field. While this ability is, in many cases (especially on devices with lousy keyboards), legitimately useful, it does seem to be a reasonable source of concern. Fast forward to today; I was setting up a new router (cheapest dual-band router money can, from Tenda) and I was almost horrified to discover that it does not mask any of its passwords by default. So I ask Slashdot: is password masking really on its way out, and does password masking do anything beyond preventing the casual shoulder-surfer?
"does password masking do anything beyond preventing the casual shoulder-surfer?"
Erm...that is precisely ALL it has ever done?! What else do you think it does?
Frankly, most password boxes should have a 'show' password option because its user friendly -- put the user in charge of whether or not the password is visible -- they can decide the risk of exposure.
Although i do think showing it by default is a bit absurd. On the other hand, with a new router out of the box; the default password is a known quanity or on the labelling anyway... so not a lot of harm exposing it there.
" is password masking really on its way out, and does password masking do anything beyond preventing the casual shoulder-surfer?"
It makes it much more likely to make a typo and have to try again.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
No, it is not going away, because it is more than just shoulder surfers that look at your screen. For example when you need to login while projecting the screen in a conference room, or sharing it during an online meeting. Now, get off my lawn. Please.
Sig ?
Which is why you then resort to first typing it in an editor, defeating the purpose of the masking, to subsequently copy it to the password field.
Except of course when the programmer of the password field was such an intolerable and incompetent turd that she disabled pasting into the field; that unfortunately also happens.
My favorite is trying to enter 15 character randomized passwords into a "force mask" field.
My favourite is entering a 24 character randomised password into websites/software where the retarded morons designing it felt they knew better than me and blocked/intercepted paste. Or, almost as bad, websites/software that relies on keypress events to cause their processing to do something with my password. ReviewBoard does this with its comments fields - if I paste from a pre-prepared note it is unaware that I've edited the comment field.
The algorithm always seems to pick confusing characters like `'|][;: I often have no idea if I'm even attempting to enter the correct password, let alone if all the rando miscreant characters were entered as intended.
If you use KeePass you can configure it to not use so many confusing characters. Sometimes you run into places where the moron designer thought that only alphanumeric characters make valid password characters.
I drink to make other people interesting!
And those same idiots also have a "confirm email" field that also disallows pasting. Even moreso than the password field, that one makes no sense.
"correct horse battery staple" would like to disagree with you. The reality is that putting in special characters, mixed case, and numbers doesn't do nearly as much to increase password complexity compared to simply making them longer. For the network I operate, I now just have a policy of a minimum of 12 characters. I tell my users to make up a silly little rhyme or ditty that they can remember, and use that as their password. Easy to remember, hard to crack, and easy to type.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Make it a bunch of asterisks.
Done.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"subsequently copy it to the password field."
I use control-v as a special character in my passwords, you insensitive clod.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If you get a password field on a web page the browser will display various scary looking messages depending of the security of the page.
Generally if its a local network page with an IP address (most router interfaces) having the password field will have the browser alert you the page is "Not Secure" of the address bar. If its a self signed certificate (which ads encryption between you and the browser, the message is even scarier with red fields or strikethroughs as a spoofed certificate COULD be playing a man in the middle confidence scheme. Only ones that get through this is devices that have set up proper certification.
So the easiest way to avoid a lot of the scary "not secure" address bar messages, is just do the login in plain text.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
If you use KeePass you can configure it to not use so many confusing characters. Sometimes you run into places where the moron designer thought that only alphanumeric characters make valid password characters.
If you go outside ASCII and depend on the keyboard mapping there's been an annoyingly high number of bugs perpetrated by developers who only use the US/English keyboard. Particularly if you rely on this early in the boot process, like you want to unlock your BitLocker/TrueCrypt/LUKS partition with a password or make some kind of single-sign on solution that won't fail when one of the applications has been made by 'tards. And I say that as a Norwegian where our alphabet has 29 letters but for any technical purpose æøå doesn't exist in my book. It's not worth the pain of crappy US-centric software.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
TFA seems to believe that since they can't think of a purpose for masking, and that a single (in their words "cheapest money can" [I assume they meant] "buy") home router doesn't use masking, that it must be the end of a field that's been in HTML for as long as HTML has had a standard.. Training sessions, remote support sessions, documentation, and yes preventing shoulder surfing are all reasons that the password field type will probably never go away.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I ran into a worse problem recently.
The website runs some javascript on the entered email address, which prompts a server somewhere to attempt to validate the email address. The attempt is achieved by beginning an smtp transaction to the MX host for the domain name.
Now, combine this with postgrey: the mail server sends back a temporary failure, which the server stupidly interprets as the email address not being valid.
The stupidity of this whole setup is monumental. Not least because exchange servers will accept emails for non-existent addresses in its default configuration.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars
<Cthon98> ********* see!
<AzureDiamond> hunter2
<AzureDiamond> doesnt look like stars to me
<Cthon98> <AzureDiamond> *******
<Cthon98> thats what I see
<AzureDiamond> oh, really?
<Cthon98> Absolutely
<AzureDiamond> you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
<AzureDiamond> haha, does that look funny to you?
<Cthon98> lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that
<Cthon98> yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> awesome!
<AzureDiamond> wait, how do you know my pw?
<Cthon98> er, I just copy pasted YOUR ******'s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw
<AzureDiamond> oh, ok.
Obligatory Nuclear Launch Codes: 0-0-0-0-0-0