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I hate passwords (feddit.org)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by cron@feddit.org to c/cybersecuritymemes@lemmy.world

How on earth can you both not accept the password I copied from my password safe and tell me that I cannot use the same pasaword again?

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[-] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago

this is probably some half of the site is silently truncating the password, while the other half isn't

[-] iamjackflack@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

Or adding a space because pasting. That happens a lot too

[-] RustyNova@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

I once had to reset my password as the new one got truncated without telling me.

Yes. It was deemed too long.

It was for an company that got plenty of my personal data

[-] cron@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago

Why on earth would someone truncate a password? I could make at least 10 more memea about bad handling of passwords

[-] kautau@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Why? Probably some wild row length limit being hit where a table storing user data was storing an asinine amount of data, just terrible DB organization in an org where someone said “who even needs a DBA.”

How? If you can truncate user passwords, you should never handle user passwords again, unless you’re a student or hobbyist learning a valuable lesson.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 0 points 1 month ago

How? If you can truncate user passwords, you should never handle user passwords again, unless you’re a student or hobbyist learning a valuable lesson.

Yeah. The real reason to be alarmed is worse than the obvious one.

If a partial version of what was originally set actually works later, it implies a scary chance they're not even hashing the password before storing it.

[-] kautau@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I think it's a nonzero chance they're not hashing it. Pretty much every hashing function, in the interest of preventing collisions, provides vastly different responses on small amounts of input. Even if they were hashing it, it would just appear to be the same password in a situation where they somehow got a collision, but again, the column length for passwords would always be fixed since a hash function always outputs the same data length.

[-] sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Also suggests the user may be reusing the same prefix if only the changed bits are getting truncated.

Should use different random passwords every time. Completely random or a random string of words. While it doesn't solve the cleartext password storage issue, a data breach won't compromise all your other accounts to same degree.

Doesn't hurt to also randomize usernames, emails, and even security question answers.

edit: or my new favorite passkeys, just make sure you trust whatever tool is managing your private keys.

[-] Willem@kutsuya.dev 0 points 1 month ago

If there has been a data leak, they might block your current password because the hash has been leaked

[-] cron@feddit.org 0 points 1 month ago

Yes, that might be a plausible theory. Basically a bad yersion of you must change your password.

[-] kitnaht@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

How would that be considered bad? Is this some meme I'm too stupid to understand or something?

[-] cron@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago

It would be better if the login flow said something like

For security reasons, we ask you to set a new password, please use the "password forgotten" function to gain access again.

instead of me being puzzled why my password doesn't work.

[-] GrabtharsHammer@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

This often happens when you entered the right password but have a typo in the user name. Everyone tries the password again, but nobody spell checks their email or username.

[-] cron@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago

You're right, this is plausible

this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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