The Password Paradox: Why Security Theater is Making Us Less Safe
(jakubjirak.medium.com)
CybersecurityMicrosoft’s research team studied this extensively. They looked at what actually happens when you enforce complexity requirements. Users don’t create randomly generated passwords. They follow predictable patterns. Capital letter at the start. Numbers at the end. Exclamation point at the very end. The word “Password” appears in about eight percent of “complex” passwords. When you force rotation, users increment numbers. Summer2024 becomes Fall2024. Or they add exclamation points. Or they change a single character and call it done. The false sense of security is dangerous. IT departments see compliance numbers go up. Everyone is following the password policy. The auditors are happy. Meanwhile, actual security hasn’t improved at all.
They'll never figure out my secret technique... TWO exclamation points!!
You noob !!!
Damn, this guy might be stronger than me... what could defeat the power of THREE exclamation points‽
Capital letter at the start. Numbers at the end. Exclamation point at the very end.
It's scary that this is a pattern so many of us does instinctually.
It's a good thing I began using KeePassXC 2 years ago..
I was so happy when we finally hired a director of security and the first thing he did was stop forcing us to rotate passwords every month.
It was so fucking insane.
Even NIST stopped recommending pw rotations.
To their credit, none of the businesses I have a pw for require changes anymore. Also, to their credit, I can use long pw's now. Some used to restrict to 8 chars max (!?) But against their credit, many still restrict the pw content, like you can't use non-letter symbols or w/e.
MONTH??
It's monthly at my company. Combined with other complexity requirements, it's pushed everyone into such predictable patterns that I could probably guess my way into any manager's PC in probably a few minutes.
Also, there's no lockdown after X attempts. I can try infinitely, as far as I'm aware.
Our organization got hacked and there was about a year after where CISO had us changing passwords every two weeks.
ThisPasswordisforJANUARY1stMonth!
That was the recommendation for years.
It was commonly 90 days for regular user accounts, and 30 days for admin/privileged accounts.
with automated password rotation, and no api access (no permission to use api access, that is) to the keyvault. And they expected us to automate stuff too!
I had companies where it was monthly. suxed
I've done a lot of internal infrastructure pentests, for companies of various sizes, and there wasn't a single pentest where spraying MonthYYYY for the past two months wouldn't get at least one hit.
That, and the fact that every company has at least one server hidden somwhere that's still vulnerable to MS17-010, that they can't update or replace for one reason or the other.
You are 100% describing my company... Still relying on SMB1 protocols and a "server" running windows XP in a closet somewhere. But we have 4 different passworded accounts minimum to do our job, and they all rotate at different times and can't reuse varying amounts of previous passwords and have different requirements to be accepted... It is a nightmare to the point everyone just saves their passwords to the browser and/or write them on a pad of paper sitting on their desk. This includes computers that are in an area open to the public that anyone could just walk up and start using.
I assume if special characters were required then it became MonthYYYY!, yes?
It makes me smile a little to know that the spirit of ms08-067 still lives on in some way.
I was pretty sure that was eternal blue but didn't believe it would still be relevant 10 years later.
More people need a mooltipass and Keepassxc
here is the thing about working at a corp. I ask IT if there is a vetted password manager to use. They say they don't have one. If I use one now im storing company passwords on unvetted software. thing is the corp has you do all this training and have you sign off you will keep to its guidelines.
Good god, that's the exact conversation I had with IT
Same. Where I work everyone switched to storing them in Excel.
Mine're in onenote. First page in the section I have for each app. If they don't have obscene password requirements that force me to generate random ones they're in code at least. Otherwise... plain text.
yeah it kinda drives me bonkers. there is a security team and they have all sorts of things that don't always make the most sense but they don't insist the company get a centralize password manager solution.
Came to the comments and you were downvoted?
Downvoter, what's the problem with these tools?
Don't let the user choose their password. Use passkey and randomly generate a secure password. Encourage passwordless login.
generate a secure ~~password~~ passphrase.
This leads to endless resets as users fail to manage the unmemorizeable passwords, which as you probably know, exposes these kinds of users to new risks via email etc..
Which is why I prefer magic links. Not the securest form, but much more secure than a password, and it is still very easy for users to login.
I do the exlamation mark thing!!!
Hunter2!
Your password is all asterisks?
I!also!do!it!sometimes!
No shit, Sherlock (c). I know nothing about cyber security and even I read somewhere years ago exactly the same: forcing password rotation with complexity rules does not make anything more secure
Yea it does one thing.
It hides exactly when there was a breach somewhere that forced a password reset.
Which is good when you know there will be a breach and mass password reset and want to cover your ass. Thank you, now it makes sense
Now tell us about passkey.
