[HN Gopher] Opensubtitles.org breached - Email addresses, IP add...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Opensubtitles.org breached - Email addresses, IP addresses,
       Passwords, Usernames
        
       Author : aero-glide2
       Score  : 260 points
       Date   : 2022-01-19 05:06 UTC (17 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (forum.opensubtitles.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (forum.opensubtitles.org)
        
       | eximius wrote:
       | Bahaha I made an account a few days ago! So glad I used a
       | throwaway email.
        
       | tlhunter wrote:
       | > The site was created in 2006 with little knowledge of security,
       | so passwords were stored in md5() hashes without salt
       | 
       | Read as: In the last fifteen years we couldn't be bothered to fix
       | our glaring security hole.
        
       | m3adow wrote:
       | > The site was created in 2006 with little knowledge of security,
       | so passwords were stored in md5() hashes without salt
       | 
       | Ouch!
       | 
       | I hope they learned their lesson: Security is an ongoing effort.
        
         | burai wrote:
         | 16 years without reviewing password security seems like a
         | massive oversight. A major leak like this it's a high price to
         | pay to learn this lesson.
        
           | foxtrottbravo wrote:
           | The really bad thing is that md5 was considered broken in
           | 2005 by security people like Bruce Schneier.
           | 
           | To be fair to them it took till around 2008 for this to
           | become widespread opinion but the signs were on the wall
           | around 2004
        
         | ilogik wrote:
         | for 2006 that's actually not bad.
         | 
         | When I joined my first company in 2010, to my horror, they were
         | using plain text passwords for users
        
           | BlueTemplar wrote:
           | Yeah, just last month I was shocked to see a shop where I
           | forgot my 2017 password, to send it to me. in plain text. by
           | e-mail. (at least IIRC they used HTTPS on their website !)
        
           | labster wrote:
           | My first company was using MySQL's OLD_PASSWORD() function in
           | 2013 -- straight, with no salt or spice of any kind -- in its
           | 64-bit glory. Horrified, I did some research and threw bcrypt
           | up there right away. Not sure if it was my my first commit,
           | or the branch fixing 20 or so SQLIs was the first. I became
           | my company's software security expert out of sheer terror.
        
       | PikachuEXE wrote:
       | Which is why I use password manager, with one unique & strong
       | password per site.
       | 
       | Risk management is important as there is no way to know what
       | website has any known or unknown security holes in it.
       | (Especially those built years ago)
       | 
       | When possible use password manager with End to End Encryption
       | (E2EE). Maybe Independent Security Audit too.
        
         | BlueTemplar wrote:
         | Well, for this kind of negligible importance website risk
         | management is simple : just use a variation on "password for
         | opensubtitles" as a password (and maybe even have it saved by
         | your browser).
         | 
         | (If like me, you find the idea of a password manager not
         | acceptable.)
        
           | TedDoesntTalk wrote:
           | Agreed. If they don't have anything personal but my email
           | address, I use a password that's been compromised and reused
           | for 10 years but easy to remember. Weigh the risk and
           | exposure against.
        
         | verytrivial wrote:
         | Can anyone talk me out of the Firefox password manager? It has
         | a poor "general" use case for non-website passwords and treats
         | mobile as a second-class satellite, but it seems to just work
         | and the sync between mobile and desktop is very handy.
         | 
         | https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/
         | 
         | I read and understood just enough of this when it was published
         | to know it would make the foundation an object of ridicule if
         | it was ill-conceived, but I obviously rely on implementation
         | details being tickety boo.
        
           | wasmitnetzen wrote:
           | KeepassDX (Android) has a really nifty keyboard feature which
           | allows you to even put passwords in apps, which the regular
           | Firefox Sync doesn't support. Maybe that's the use case which
           | makes you do the switch?
        
             | chompychop wrote:
             | Do we need to toggle this feature somewhere in the
             | settings? I use KeepassDX but I've never been asked by the
             | app to auto-fill in passwords on websites or other apps.
        
               | wasmitnetzen wrote:
               | It's a separate keyboard, and needs to be enabled in the
               | keyboard settings of Android. There's a link in the
               | KeepassDX settings.
               | 
               | There is a separate autofill feature, but that works
               | quite rarely, maybe 10% of the apps support that, but
               | that makes things even easier.
        
             | KwanEsq wrote:
             | Firefox Android (and iOS it seems?) actually supports
             | autofill for other apps, one just needs to enable it:
             | https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-of-support-
             | firefox-...
             | 
             | (I've used it quite successfully when it was in a separate
             | app called Lockwise)
        
             | verytrivial wrote:
             | Bouncing via the system clipboard does feel a little
             | sketchy, yes. The other is the password generation feature
             | is entirely missing on Android, so I need to use another
             | good source of randomn characters or delay until I'm at my
             | desktop. It's really only these two features that are
             | missing for me, but since I create new password relatively
             | rarely (once or twice a month), I find just having it
             | _there_ to be the winning feature. Also the  'copy these
             | random files' as a back-up mechanism for disaster recover
             | seems a bit ... like something I would design, so not
             | great.
        
           | ufo wrote:
           | For me the main thing that stops me from using is poor
           | support for non-website passwords, which you already
           | mentioned. I also miss having a "notes" field where I can
           | write down what email I used to sign up, or answers to
           | security questions (I like having "fake" answers for those).
        
           | jillesvangurp wrote:
           | Use bitwarden (see related thread on HN today). Works great
           | in Firefox, on mobile, Firefox mobile, etc. All synced. And
           | it works in other browsers too.
        
         | carlhjerpe wrote:
         | I use my own domain and give each website their own e-mail
         | address too, so I know who is breached/selling my information.
         | For password management I use BitWarden, to which I am a paying
         | customer of 15$ a year for their premium features (Premium
         | features being TOTP integrated into the password manager,
         | probably something else too that I don't use).
         | 
         | BitWarden is open source, both server and clients. There's even
         | a third party implementation of the server in rust that seems
         | to be mostly compatible. Both the official and the third party
         | server are self-hostable.
         | 
         | BitWarden runs their infrastructure on Azure, uses Azure
         | managed databases and Azure managed backups. So I'm quite
         | comfortable having my passwords there.
         | 
         | The only feature I miss is that I'd like BitWarden to send me
         | an email with all my passwords, encrypted so that I own a
         | backup of my data too in case the worst happens.
        
           | COGlory wrote:
           | Is exporting your passwords and encrypting the file not an
           | option for you?
        
             | carlhjerpe wrote:
             | Well yes and no, I'd like it to be automatic but I have an
             | old archive around somewhere.
        
           | diarrhea wrote:
           | > _There 's even a third party implementation of the server
           | in rust that seems to be mostly compatible._
           | 
           | Not just mostly. Vaultwarden also offers server-side features
           | usually only found in paid Bitwarden plans.
        
           | g19fanatic wrote:
           | I use keepass with the app.keeweb.info frontend and a gdrive
           | backend. keeweb.info has totp as well. Seems pretty straight
           | forward and its free. Make the backend file accessible by
           | link and forward a bit.ly to it and you can pull it down
           | anywhere you have internet. Phone app works great too.
           | Everything works offline too if gdrive isn't your thing
           | 
           | Every computer I normally use will have a copy of the file in
           | the case that I can't access my gdrive (which I don't see
           | happening really).
        
           | gck1 wrote:
           | > I use my own domain and give each website their own e-mail
           | address too
           | 
           | I wish this was a supported feature on @gmail.com domain (not
           | the +{string} thing). I like the idea, but keep thinking that
           | I'll be uniquely identifiable on every database, since it's
           | almost always going to be just 1 entry for the domain I own.
        
             | carlhjerpe wrote:
             | A proprietary Fastmail feature generates anonymous
             | @fastmail.com addresses for you, but I mostly use my own
             | domain since I don't want to be locked in to one provider.
        
             | dzmien wrote:
             | Gmail [0] ignores dots in your email handle and so you
             | could use a different pattern of dots for each website you
             | register at and record it in a spreadsheet or something.
             | The first and last characters cannot be dots, and I do not
             | think you can have two or more dots in a row, but there is
             | no limit to how many "legal" dots you can use. Not as
             | elegant, but definitely doable.
             | 
             | [0] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en
        
           | toyg wrote:
           | _> TOTP integrated into the password manager_
           | 
           | Is this portable, like Authy does it? Last time I moved phone
           | it was a real pain to move authenticators...
        
             | carlhjerpe wrote:
             | Yes, you have the same TOTP keys in both your phone and
             | browser ext
        
       | throwaway834343 wrote:
       | What is the motivation to run this non profit site? I can not
       | believe the motivation can simply be to get subtitles to watch
       | movies personally. I suspect this is not really non profit as
       | there the site supports ads. My guess is the owner is making
       | decent money via ads. To the readers of this comment, if you can
       | make a rough calculation of the ad revenue with good assumptions
       | to validate or invalidate my theory, that would be amazing.
       | Thanks HN
        
         | nano9 wrote:
         | I don't understand such a website anyway. A website like
         | OpenSubtitles seems like overkill for passing around text and
         | timestamps. Why not use something like GitHub? Why couldn't the
         | project simply be a big git repo? It would even be easier.
        
           | Liquid_Fire wrote:
           | This is a little bit like saying Dropbox could just be a git
           | repo. Yes, it could, but normal users don't know how to use
           | git, and it adds features that git by itself doesn't provide.
           | 
           | Not to mention having this on GitHub would probably get taken
           | down almost instantly due to copyright infringement.
        
         | erklik wrote:
         | > I can not believe the motivation can simply be to get
         | subtitles to watch movies personally
         | 
         | Why can't it be? Does everything require a money motive? Is it
         | impossible that people want to do something good?
        
           | lawtalkinghuman wrote:
           | > Does everything require a money motive?
           | 
           | On HN, apparently. See the recent thread on Wordle.
           | 
           | The reality is likely to be: they make a very small amount
           | from ads and user donations that might, if they're lucky,
           | cover the costs of hosting. The warez scene is a subculture
           | and community for the people who participate in it.
           | 
           | It is depressing that HN participants are so often mystified
           | by the idea people might be motivated by intrinsic or social
           | factors to engage in peer-based production (whether legal or
           | not) when so many of the companies they run or work for exist
           | only because of peer-based production efforts like Linux and
           | other FOSS software.
        
             | throwaway834343 wrote:
             | I should have been more clearer. Please see my other
             | comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29991505 for
             | clarification. I am glad to see comments like yours at HN
             | honestly.
        
             | johndoeee wrote:
             | > The reality is likely to be: they make a very small
             | amount from ads and user donations that might, if they're
             | lucky, cover the costs of hosting
             | 
             | Opensubtitles has a VIP program at $15 a year.
             | 
             | It's quite easy to find the person who runs the site and,
             | according to their CV, this is basically their job. That'd
             | make Opensubtitles a for-profit piracy site, i guess.
        
               | m000 wrote:
               | > according to their CV, this is basically their job.
               | That'd make Opensubtitles a for-profit piracy site, i
               | guess.
               | 
               | Guess what: Non-profit != for-free && Non-profit != for-
               | a-loss.
               | 
               | If in order for opensubtitles to fulfill its envisioned
               | role needs full-time attention, it is legit to pay
               | yourself or hire an employee, paid by the ad and or
               | subscription money. That's what also happens on all
               | registered non-profit organizations.
        
               | lawtalkinghuman wrote:
               | Yeah, I saw it had a subscription model for VIP users.
               | I'm guessing they're not getting Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates
               | level rich off it though.
        
               | k4rli wrote:
               | Subtitles aren't piracy in any way though. Kind of
               | similar to legality of torrent sites but even less
               | questionable.
        
               | draugadrotten wrote:
               | It takes hours of work to translate one hour of movie, so
               | when a translated subtitle is copied, it is most
               | certainly piracy. If you are faster than that please
               | consider becoming a translator for sites like the TED
               | foundation.
        
               | apetresc wrote:
               | I don't think they're implying the subtitles themselves
               | are piracy, but the _users_ of opensubtitles.org are
               | overwhelmingly using them for pirated media. The subs are
               | all indexed against scene versions of the video files (as
               | you can tell from their names), and that 's what most
               | users are using it for. After all, streaming services,
               | DVDs, and other legitimate ways of consuming these
               | shows/movies already come with subtitles.
               | 
               | No, the 0.1% of subs for obscure indie shows that didn't
               | have native subs doesn't change that.
        
             | tiborsaas wrote:
             | I think you massively underestimate how much ads can bring
             | in with a high traffic website:
             | https://www.similarweb.com/website/opensubtitles.org/
             | 
             | I'd guess about $1-3M/year from ads.
        
               | weird-eye-issue wrote:
               | You are overestimating how much ad revenue comes in from
               | non Tier 1 countries and from that specific niche. I'd be
               | surprised if they get more than $1-2 per 1000 visitors.
               | Could be lower than that
        
               | tiborsaas wrote:
               | $1 / 1000 visitor is $110k / month with 11 million
               | visitors which agrees with my estimation.
        
               | weird-eye-issue wrote:
               | You want to double check your math there?
        
               | tiborsaas wrote:
               | Hahh, "I don't need a calculator" :) Regardless, I can't
               | find the source, but I remember reading that this site is
               | a cash cow.
        
           | throwaway834343 wrote:
           | I should have been more clearer. I can understand running a
           | hobby site to chat with fellow hobbyists which is a
           | motivation for socializing. In this case its pretty much
           | static. I fail to understand the motivation.
        
           | szszrk wrote:
           | Well, not when licensed entertainment is involved. Subtitles
           | may sound harmless but are enough to start a court battle.
           | This happened in Poland with a similar site. I would not dare
           | to claim that authors motives and all actions were clean and
           | done in the open, but for sure they were targeted by various
           | media groups for copyright infringement just because of plain
           | subtitles.
           | 
           | You need resources to deal with that and it's not gonna be a
           | clean fight.
        
         | Grimburger wrote:
         | I've only ever interacted with it after account setup year ago
         | via a rpi running Kodi which automatically downloads subtitles
         | now and then, unless specifically searching for different
         | versions barely remember it exists. I hope they make money
         | somehow but get the feeling it's mostly just a bunch of api
         | leeches like myself.
        
         | Markoff wrote:
         | hahahaha, I know personally owner of the site and trust me it's
         | VERY MUCH for profit site making him decent income for last 15
         | years living in Thailand travelling around world scubadiving
         | and having fun
         | 
         | it's not just ads, but also paid API access AFAIR
         | 
         | nothing wrong with that, just not sure where you come with idea
         | he would bother, if there would not be good money in it
        
         | causi wrote:
         | These days a lot of the subtitle files actually have ads
         | embedded in the text itself, either during the movie or at the
         | beginning/end.
        
         | FDSGSG wrote:
         | Opensubtitles is definitely for-profit. They sell lots of ad
         | space, including ads injected into the subs themselves.
        
       | exotree wrote:
       | I thought their response to this was very humble, and I wish them
       | the best going forward.
        
       | gattilorenz wrote:
       | > Tue Jan 18, 2022 2:34 pm
       | 
       | > In August 2021 we received message on Telegram from a hacker,
       | who showed us proof that he could gain access to the user table
       | of opensubtitles.org, and downloaded a SQL dump from it.
       | 
       | Wait, they got proof in August and release the info only now? Was
       | this because they were trying to be in a talk with the hacker? It
       | wasn't really clear, but it's a long time...
        
         | Deukhoofd wrote:
         | They explain more here:
         | 
         | https://forum.opensubtitles.org/viewtopic.php?p=46845#p46845
        
           | wasmitnetzen wrote:
           | So, still a wrong procedure. They should have told everyone
           | to renew their password and view them as compromised in
           | August.
           | 
           | Edit: typo
        
             | gattilorenz wrote:
             | > nothing was leaked in august, we followed the hackers
             | request, secured our services, hired an extra sysadmin, ran
             | extra audits.
             | 
             | Oh yes, what could ever go wrong with keeping already
             | compromised passwords? Plus it was clearly a white hacker
             | that helped them secure the website, the required fee was
             | for this service.
             | 
             | /s
        
               | aniforprez wrote:
               | It's truly appalling that so many times, on HN even,
               | people genuinely recommend paying the ransom because
               | "hackers won't go back on their word cause it'll ruin
               | their reputation". If you're hacked, purge the passwords
               | and reset everyone and do everything in your power to
               | ensure no one can access it in a similar way again. I
               | have no idea why anyone would think a hacker wouldn't
               | simply turn around and sell the data anyway
        
               | lbriner wrote:
               | I don't personally agree with paying the ransom but the
               | logic seems sound.
               | 
               | If you pay them, they _might_ keep their word. After all,
               | how much would they get paid for a list of passwords
               | compared to a ransom payment?
               | 
               | If you don't pay them, they are _more_ likely to either
               | sell or leak the lists.
               | 
               | In this case, although easy to say now, the correct
               | answer is not to create public web applications until you
               | know how to store passwords correctly and host databases
               | securely, it's not like the information isn't readily
               | available.
        
               | gattilorenz wrote:
               | I think people recommend that in case of ransomware,
               | which is most of the time the only chance of getting the
               | data back (helping the ransonware market thrive, and with
               | the risk of not getting data back anyway).
               | 
               | Never saw anyone suggest paying for avoiding password
               | leaks
        
       | emptysongglass wrote:
       | And this is why users protect themselves with services like
       | Firefox Relay, something Dustin Ingram, a Python Software
       | Foundation Director, doesn't appear to understand [1] or care. My
       | email was leaked in this breach, along with many others, an email
       | I used to really value but one I've since relegated to the
       | dumpster fire of "spam slot" because I learned my lesson too
       | late.
       | 
       | Dustin has now locked that GitHub to only previous contributors
       | so users are once again left voiceless and powerless in the
       | continuing war against their privacy.
       | 
       | We've been thinking of the business owners and the children [2]
       | for decades now. It's time to start thinking of the users, people
       | like you and me who are exploited constantly for everything they
       | have to be unceremoniously discarded in a waste heap once they've
       | been used up.
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/disposable-email-domains/disposable-
       | email...
       | 
       | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29978952
        
         | m-p-3 wrote:
         | I tried modifying my email to a @mozmail.com on
         | opensubtitles.org after the breach and I never received the
         | confirmation email, so I assume they're blocking it.
         | 
         | Anyway I deleted my account.
        
           | j1elo wrote:
           | Firefox Relay misses some emails due to misconfiguration of
           | TLS. That might be the issue. This issue report is still
           | open:
           | 
           | https://github.com/mozilla/fx-private-relay/issues/757
        
         | piechlediech wrote:
         | The blame belongs solely on opensubtitles.org for using a list
         | to block users and getting hacked. They probably have their
         | reasons but still I feel it is hostile to users that care about
         | privacy.
         | 
         | Firefox Relay _is_ a disposable mail service, so it makes sense
         | to include it in a list of such services. I wonder how they
         | handle mail aliases like GMail allow with + or . as separators.
        
         | darau1 wrote:
         | Interesting. The service I use isn't there lol I'm afraid to
         | tell anyone, now, lest it be put on the list.
        
       | null4bl3 wrote:
       | Again!
       | 
       | They just had a breach like 4 months ago
        
       | sneeds wrote:
       | > The site was created in 2006 with little knowledge of security,
       | so passwords were stored in md5() hashes without salt Sorry, but
       | this is no excuse. It has been 15 years and there were so many
       | breaches that even many casual people know about databases leaks
       | and that passwords have to be stored in some special way. I don't
       | know this guy's background, but he at least knows that md5 is not
       | sufficient here. And then it never crossed his mind to do a check
       | up on this? That's just negligent.
        
         | Markoff wrote:
         | to his defense it's not like there is anything serious stored
         | there with those accounts, it's just subtitles
        
           | mnw21cam wrote:
           | It's not just subtitles - it's all the login information
           | stored there as well. Email addresses to send spam to,
           | passwords that have likely been reused on another site.
        
       | martin_a wrote:
       | > It is kind of amazing, that the site was hacked now, after 15
       | years - so that hacker must have spent quite a lot of time and
       | energy on it.
       | 
       | I'm pretty sure that it did not take "that hacker" 15 years to
       | find this vulnerability.
       | 
       | Pretty strange forum post.
        
         | Aeolun wrote:
         | Website still managed by a just graduated 21 year old?
        
           | diarrhea wrote:
           | A prodigy at 6 years old back in the day.
        
           | Markoff wrote:
           | he is not that young, roughly my age around 40 living in Ko
           | Phangan
           | 
           | here are his videos since his website is dead and he is also
           | not active on twitter anymore
           | https://www.youtube.com/user/BranoGege/videos
        
       | jcrawfordor wrote:
       | I've lost a lot of trust in opensubtitles since they started
       | going down for "scheduled maintenance" for about two hours a day
       | during the west coast evening, started selling advertising in the
       | middle of the subtitles, and launched a "2.0" in the form of
       | opensubtitles.com that continues to have a confusing and poorly
       | described relationship with opensubtitles.org.
       | 
       | The whole thing has just given a solid impression of being poorly
       | managed, and the way this breach notification is written really
       | reinforces that. It's unfortunate as I would be happy to donate
       | money but... not to opensubtitles, which seems to be too deep in
       | a hole to realistically get back out of it.
        
       | m-p-3 wrote:
       | Alright, changed my password, and to mitigate the issue I tried
       | switching the email to a disposable one (@mozmail.com) and never
       | received the email confirmation to apply the change.
       | 
       | Looks like I'll just delete my account and never come back then.
        
       | foxtrottbravo wrote:
       | Reading this makes me furious, not because they were hacked but
       | because this shitshow of a Website was so damn lazy.
       | 
       | (paraphrasing) "We were stupid 15 years ago and have been lazy
       | ever since" is a slap to the face.
       | 
       | Maybe they should have done something about their platform
       | instead of watching anime with subtitles.
       | 
       | Those people should have their internet privileges permanently
       | removed and the whole site should be burned in a dumpster like
       | the dumpsterfire of security they had running for fucking 15
       | years.
        
         | foxtrottbravo wrote:
         | Adding insult to injury is the last Paragraph I actually
         | missed:
         | 
         | > If companies like microsoft, facebook, twitter, nintendo or
         | zoom can get hacked, what are our chances as a tiny team to not
         | endup getting attacked ?
         | 
         | It's not about them getting attacked but they weren't the
         | target of a three letter agency Throwing weaponized 0days their
         | way either.
         | 
         | Anything that is remotely considered best practice would have
         | helped:
         | 
         | Like having strong passwords for the "SuperAdmin" account that
         | was compromised. It's called SuperAdmin for a reason don't you
         | think?
         | 
         | Not using unsalted hashes in the first place?
         | 
         | Investing some of your ad revenue in making security updates to
         | a system that was already bad the second it was conceived?
         | 
         | Their whole statement is insulting
        
       | steviedotboston wrote:
       | Not very reassuring that when you reset your password they send
       | you a new one in plaintext over email....
        
       | iqanq wrote:
       | >The site was created in 2006 with little knowledge of security,
       | so passwords were stored in md5() hashes without salt
       | 
       | That's a good excuse for it to be like this in 2006. What about
       | 2021?
        
       | korginator wrote:
       | By now I assume that any service where I've registered for an
       | account is being actively targeted and that any organisation
       | that's not a Google, Microsoft or the likes has already been
       | breached. MFA is your friend, and even plain vanilla SMS based
       | MFA is better than just a username and password for
       | authentication. I've enabled hardware based MFA anywhere it's
       | supported.
       | 
       | 15-20 years ago it was fun to sign up for dozens of new services
       | and we reused passwords everywhere. Now every one of these
       | accounts is a liability and a potential vector for bad things to
       | happen. The worst case scenario is when an account of yours is
       | breached and abused for a long time, possibly with legal and
       | financial ramifications, and you don't find out until much later.
       | 
       | A couple of months ago I happened to glance at my Gmail's spam
       | folder by chance, and one email way down the list immediately
       | grabbed my attention. The subject line had *my password* for an
       | old and unused account that I'd forgotten long back and the
       | sender was trying to extort bitcoin if I wanted the account back.
       | 
       | The big issue is with online shopping. The sender has your name,
       | address, email, phone number and possibly your CC number, a prime
       | target for identity thieves.
        
         | BlueTemplar wrote:
         | It _is_ very annoying how more and more shops force you to give
         | a phone number... IMHO (unless product defect) only the
         | transporter should get that !
        
           | Avamander wrote:
           | Twitch (Authy), eBay and Amazon come to mind as the most
           | annoying examples. My god just give me TOTP or stop pestering
           | me for my number. eBay is so idiotic that it even asks for
           | security questions. The 2000s called, they want their
           | obsolete security back.
        
         | kevincox wrote:
         | > even plain vanilla SMS based MFA is better than just a
         | username and password for authentication
         | 
         | I'd be careful with this because a lot of services will allow
         | you to reset your password with _just_ SMS verification once
         | they have your number. So while Password+SMS is stronger in
         | practice this usually becomes Password+SMS OR Customer
         | Support+SMS which is decidedly weaker.
        
         | stef25 wrote:
         | About 10 years ago I found this feature of Gmail where you
         | could see the login history, with lots of entries with IPs from
         | China, the US and various other countries. That really drove
         | the point home for me. Since then it's all unique passwords
         | stored in Keepass. And it still doesn't feel 100% secure.
        
           | mardifoufs wrote:
           | My old outlook account receives log in attempt every ~5mins
           | (!!) from all over the world. It's actually crazy that the
           | attempts have not stopped after failing for so long, probably
           | indicates it's from different attackers. The email has been
           | on a couple of leaks but even then, the sheer amount of
           | attempts is so crazy that I'd assume they are using a lot of
           | password leaks that aren't publicly known yet.
        
       | shaan7 wrote:
       | I already knew about this before I visited HN today, thanks to
       | Firefox Monitor ( https://monitor.firefox.com/ ) :D
        
       | franciscop wrote:
       | > user passwords are saved in safe form using hash_hmac and
       | sha256 algo with salt and pepper, all md5() passwords are deleted
       | 
       | Wait, what? Definitely lesson not learned:
       | 
       | - sha256 is _not_ the proper way to store passwords, it 's still
       | vulnerable to the same attack as md5, rainbow tables, because
       | it's a FAST algorithm (sure md5 is also poor for collisions,
       | meaning it's worse, but practical attacks for lists of hashed
       | passwords are rainbow tables). At least with salt+pepper it
       | limits attack surface, but instead you should be hashing your
       | passwords with:
       | 
       | - `password_hash`[1] should be used instead of `hash_hmac`, with
       | the algorithm being "PASSWORD_BCRYPT" or better[2]. This is a
       | slow hashing method, meaning anyone trying to rainbow-table
       | attack your passwords will have a hard time.
       | 
       | - A common technique is _not_ to delete old passwords, but
       | instead to rehash them with the new algorithm. This would be
       | useful for moving from sha256 = > bcrypt, since collisions on
       | sha256 are not practical, but if the original hash was md5 then I
       | think it's fine to delete the md5 passwords and require a new
       | one. Good luck to those who changed their email in 15 years
       | though.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.password-hash.php
       | 
       | [2] I haven't followed the space too closely for 3-4 years, I'm
       | not sure if bcrypt/blowfish is still the recommended algorithm or
       | there's newer better ones
        
         | joren485 wrote:
         | > I'm not sure if bcrypt/blowfish is still the recommended
         | algorithm or there's newer better ones
         | 
         | While bcrypt is already much, much better than using MD5 or
         | SHA256, the best practice is to use Argon2.
         | 
         | In practice, it is more important to use a hashing algorithm
         | that is designed for passwords (e.g. bcrypt, argon2, scrypt)
         | than it is to choose the best one. As this breach shows, many
         | sites are still using insecure hashes, like MD5, because it
         | worked 15 years ago.
        
           | brobinson wrote:
           | Which mode do you/would you use? Hybrid?
           | 
           | I haven't had to write any password storage code since before
           | Argon2 won the 2015 competition so I haven't gone deep on the
           | "side channel attack vs. memory hardness" tradeoff question
           | when picking the mode. I am curious which mode others are
           | using.
        
             | joren485 wrote:
             | Hybrid (Argon2id) is probably the safest bet if you are
             | unsure.
             | 
             | The specific modes are useful dependent on the threat model
             | you are protecting against. Argon2i protects better against
             | timing/side-channel attacks and Argon2d protects better
             | against brute-forcing attacks.
             | 
             | In my opinion, a developer should (in most cases) focus on
             | application security instead of picking the perfect hashing
             | algorithm, as application security is far more crucial.
        
             | fernovus wrote:
             | Argon2ID
        
         | woutifier wrote:
         | Defense against rainbow tables is obtained via salt, not via
         | slow hashes. A rainbow table is a space-time tradeoff (you give
         | space, and you get time), so using a slow hash only
         | "encourages" (for lack of me knowing a better word) creating
         | rainbow tables.
         | 
         | Adding long salts on the other hand requires the attacker to
         | create an infeasible number of rainbow tables (one for each
         | possible value of the salt).
        
           | stef25 wrote:
           | Where do you store the salt?
        
             | jjice wrote:
             | The salt can be stored directly in front of the hash in the
             | same string in the DB (a lot of crypto hash functions will
             | output this). It can be plaintext since the goal is to add
             | a random component so rainbow tables wouldn't be possible
             | since there's always more to the string being hashed.
             | That's where it becomes a time problem.
             | 
             | Yeah, you could rebuild a rainbow table yourself u til you
             | find the collision, but you have to search every bit of the
             | potential hash space.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | gwd wrote:
           | > Defense against rainbow tables is obtained via salt, not
           | via slow hashes.
           | 
           | And bcrypt includes stores a unique salt next to the hash for
           | every password, making rainbow tables completely useless.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt
        
             | tialaramex wrote:
             | Nobody is saying bcrypt isn't a good choice here, they're
             | saying that _rainbow tables_ (and all time-space trades)
             | are made infeasible by salt _regardless_ of whether you 're
             | using a good password hash like bcrypt.
        
               | gwd wrote:
               | But both you & GGP are talking about bcrypt as though it
               | was _only_ a password hash. If someone says,  "I'm using
               | bcrypt", then they are using _both_ a password hash _and_
               | unique per-password salts, or they 're not using bcrypt.
               | What makes bcrypt and other such systems nice (and makes
               | this kind of mistake basically inexcusable in 2022) is
               | that if you're using a library or package which
               | implements it (which you should), you don't need to think
               | about salts; you just call
               | GenerateFromPassword(<new_password>) and
               | CompareHashAndPassword(<entered_password>, <stored_hash>)
               | and forget about it.
               | 
               | EDIT: I mean, I understand maybe why in 2006 you used md5
               | without salt. But a few years ago I when I tossed
               | together my first webapp (a scheduling system for the
               | community I'm involved in), I just googled "password
               | hash" and immediately bcrypt came up as a recommendation;
               | there was a package in my target programming language, so
               | after half an hour of research and 5 minutes of
               | programming I was done. I don't understand how the
               | opensubtitles team, after having had their password
               | database compromised, came up with "use sha256 without
               | salt" instead of "use bcrypt or one of the many libraries
               | which takes care of all of that for you".
        
               | tialaramex wrote:
               | I mean, sure, but, notice that you're still way behind
               | state of the art for the end of the 20th century. I blame
               | Tim (Berners-Lee, the man whose toy hypermedia system
               | we're all stuck with because it became popular)
               | 
               | You note that when you googled "Password hash" you got
               | pointed to a decent password hash. But, knowing what
               | questions to ask is half the battle. Too many people
               | figured hey, I should use a _cryptographic hash_ and got
               | pointed to MD5 (or SHA1 or even SHA256) because that 's
               | what those are.
               | 
               | The words you should have googled weren't "password hash"
               | but maybe "web authentication" and then the answer is
               | clearly you shouldn't use passwords or any sort of shared
               | secret.
               | 
               | You can have a copy of the authentication database for
               | the toys system I maintain, but it wouldn't help you sign
               | into it because all the information in it is public, a
               | trick we've known how to do in principle for decades, and
               | which works today, on the public Web, with readily
               | available devices (e.g. my phone) and yet, here we are on
               | Hacker News discussing which password hash is best like
               | it's still 1985.
        
               | gwd wrote:
               | > with readily available devices (e.g. my phone) and yet
               | 
               | I'm pretty sure it wasn't anywhere near ready to use five
               | years ago when I wrote v1 of my webapp. And googling
               | again, it's still not clear whether it would work on
               | whatever random software setup some of my zealous-for-
               | software-freedom colleagues use. With passwords I don't
               | need to worry: if they can render the HTML+CSS (even the
               | JS is optional, because some of my colleagues prefer
               | NoScript), they can log in.
        
               | dotancohen wrote:
               | This, _and_ bcrypt is slow. Many wrapping libraries'
               | hashing functions accept an optional parameter to specify
               | just how slow it should be.
        
           | franciscop wrote:
           | True, I might be mixing names. What I mean is that now with
           | fast hashes it's feasible to take for each user and compute a
           | table with the 1,000,000 most common passwords and their
           | specific salt, and repeat for all the users. With a modern
           | homemade GPU rigs making billions[1] of computations per
           | second, you are testing thousands of users per second with a
           | 1M word dictionary, so you are going to find matches.
           | 
           | [1] https://hackaday.com/2012/12/06/25-gpus-brute-
           | force-348-bill...
        
           | tialaramex wrote:
           | Technically this class of trades also incurs a lot _more_
           | hashing (and so the expense of the hash function is
           | important), the trade is valuable because you get to do all
           | the work once, up front, and not spend that time on any
           | particular password hash once you have it.
           | 
           | So e.g. computing a rainbow table for all possible Windows
           | 2000 passwords (up to 14 characters but you're actually only
           | doing 56-bit inputs) in the LANMAN scheme took ages, and
           | produced a fairly large file, but having done so that's it,
           | you, or anyone you give the file to, can reverse LANMAN
           | hashes into working passwords almost instantly.
           | 
           | (Microsoft's LANMAN hash lacked salt, and is stupid in
           | various other ways, MD5 would actually have been a _better_
           | choice than LANMAN, because you allow arbitrary input
           | passwords and thus _good_ passwords are stronger instead of
           | impossible even though MD5 is much too fast for a good
           | password hash)
        
         | etu wrote:
         | A properly implemented use of password_hash() would also allow
         | them to use the same field and code for different algorithms
         | over time.
         | 
         | What I mean is, the stored data contains which algorithms it
         | is. So they can in their code or configuration change which
         | algorithms to use and how many times it should hash. Then on
         | login they can verify the password against the hash and also
         | check if the stored hash needs to be rehashed against the
         | current set settings, then it can create a new hash from the
         | password the user entered on login and store that in the
         | database.
         | 
         | Then you get automatic hash upgrades to match the current
         | settings of the hashing of the passwords on the site with
         | basically no user interaction (other than the act of logging in
         | to have the password in plain text).
        
         | mooreds wrote:
         | Or how about "we moved to an open source library or third party
         | auth provider to host all our user data. We learned we didn't
         | want to be responsible for such a critical security area."
         | 
         | There are lots and lots of options. Seems like they are a php
         | shop, so even moving to any of these open source PHP server
         | libraries[0] would have been a better move.
         | 
         | Disclosure: I work for a third party auth provider, FusionAuth.
         | 
         | 0: https://oauth.net/code/php/
        
       | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
       | Meh. I treated that site like every random site that requires a
       | login that I think I'll use once: it got my 20 year old Hotmail
       | address, a randomly generated password, and was accessed solely
       | from my VPN IP.
       | 
       | The only reason I even set up an account was so that one of my
       | Kodi extensions could hook into it.
        
         | Jnr wrote:
         | I used it like a public site, using a very popular password.
         | Same as in other sites where people share the same account
         | between multiple people.
         | 
         | I don't really mind that they got breached. I hope they recover
         | easily and continue to offer their service.
         | 
         | And I will not change that password, unless I am denied access.
         | Don't really care if people know it.
        
       | YPPH wrote:
       | >On the technical side, he was able to hack the low security
       | password of a SuperAdmin, and gained access to an unsecured
       | script, which was available only for SuperAdmins. This script
       | allowed him to perform SQL injections and extract the data.
       | 
       | It can be tempting to forgo the same security considerations when
       | programming backend applications which aren't ordinarily
       | accessible to the public. I guess this is a reminder why the
       | temptation must be resisted.
        
       | stubish wrote:
       | At one point I think you could use opensubtitles.org without a
       | username and password. I wonder in hindsight if the liability of
       | storing PII was worth it?
        
         | pizza234 wrote:
         | I think one use case was subtitle downloading (typically, a
         | client like Subdownloader) for VPN users, whose requests would
         | be denied if unauthenticated.
        
           | pferde wrote:
           | Why? The site's raison d'etre is to make subtitles readily
           | available for downloading by anyone. What is the purpose of
           | locking it behind authentication? What did that realistically
           | achieve?
        
             | pizza234 wrote:
             | Spam was one reason (I've actually asked to the admins,
             | which were very pissed off by it).
        
             | drexlspivey wrote:
             | API REQUESTS MUST BE AUTHENTICATED
             | 
             | With Covid-19 pandemic requests for our API went skyrocket,
             | our servers could not handle so much traffic, so we decided
             | to limit API usage just to authenticated requests for User
             | Agents. In short it means, you have to provide
             | opensubtitles.org username and password in LogIn() method.
             | 
             | We are avare some of user agents doesn't implement
             | authentication for numerous reasons.
             | 
             | What you can do for fix, if your app is affected: - let
             | your users know about this change - implement LogIn() into
             | your app with user authentication - contact us for pricing,
             | so your app can send unathenticated requests (e.g. if you
             | have free and pro version of your app, it is possible free
             | will work only with authenticated requests and pro works as
             | before)
             | 
             | More info on [our forum](https://forum.opensubtitles.org/vi
             | ewtopic.php?f=11&t=17110)
             | 
             | We are actively blocking IPs, which are sending
             | unathenticated requests
        
       | johnchristopher wrote:
       | Opensubtitles became really frustrating to use once they began
       | asking for a login and a password to download subtitles in VLC or
       | Xbmc/kodi (basically every time you need to use the API). I
       | always forgot about login details and in my opinion it wasn't
       | needed at all for them except for profile tracking I guess. They
       | forced people to register to get subtitles, they willingly forced
       | people to increase their attack surface for not much benefits to
       | users (and probably themselves).
       | 
       | edit: at the time I also was young and naive [0] and thought the
       | open part of opensubtitles meant that people submitted subtitles
       | in their free time out of their good heart and the site was
       | simply hosting and organizing them, no problem with displaying
       | ads on the website or at the beginning of the subs I thought, to
       | make up for hosting costs. Subs hunting was so much fun at the
       | time /s. But having to register to "prevent abuse" was a tad too
       | much.
       | 
       | [0] still am by the way, thanks for asking :)
        
         | mkdirp wrote:
         | > Opensubtitles became really frustrating to use once they
         | began asking for a login and a password to download subtitles
         | in VLC or Xbmc/kodi (basically every time you need to use the
         | API).
         | 
         | This was actually optional, and always was. I think the issue
         | was that they had made some changes in the backend, but the
         | addons didn't update the code to accommodate. At least this was
         | the case for Kodi. The opensubtitles addon has essentially
         | become abandonware anyway. There are now third-party addons
         | that provide the same functionality but without a login, and
         | across different subtitle websites.
        
           | stevenwoo wrote:
           | The website began to require login within the last three days
           | for me.
        
           | morrbo wrote:
           | Can you name a few please?
        
             | Liquix wrote:
             | https://github.com/a4k-openproject/a4kSubtitles
             | 
             | anonymous, scrapes a handful of sites including
             | opensubtitles + subscene
        
               | johnchristopher wrote:
               | I am confused, the GIF show a login+password for
               | opensubtitles https://camo.githubusercontent.com/a1cd19d1
               | 7f0484669e61673fa....
               | 
               | Oh, well. I'll give a try next time I launch kodi, thanks
               | for the tip.
        
               | mkdirp wrote:
               | It says "Optional" next to the username/password.
        
         | Markoff wrote:
         | huh? I use to download subtitles in VLC through built in VLsub
         | via opensubtitles and nobody ask me for any login/pwd and I
         | download A LOT of subs, sometimes even 5-10 to try with some
         | releases
         | 
         | now on the website I would hit the limit very fast, but through
         | VLsub it's essentially unlimited
        
           | johnchristopher wrote:
           | There was a time the built-in VLSub wasn't built-in and I
           | remember at some point it was abandoned and then picked up
           | again. Nowadays it's working again as intended, no more
           | freezes or invalid login. Still has the bug where the next
           | video in a queue picks up the good subtitles but it downloads
           | the subtitle for the previous video.
           | 
           | I googled vlsub opensubtitles not working and I still find
           | relevant threads
           | https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=152485
           | 
           | I have been using opensubtitles since they opened the site
           | though and I couldn't really tell when the problem appeared
           | and disappeared.
        
         | spamtarget wrote:
         | It became way more frustrating when they started to add ads in
         | the subtitles. It was a few years ago and since then i never
         | even tried to use them
        
           | m-p-3 wrote:
           | I downloaded the SRT, stripped the ads using SubtitleEdit and
           | embedded them in the MKV file using MKVToolNix to keep it all
           | together.
        
       | begueradj wrote:
       | You did right: no need to pay the ransom.
        
         | baobabKoodaa wrote:
         | I'm confused. Didn't he say that he DID pay the ransom?
        
           | begueradj wrote:
           | My bad, you are right. He said they paid. The short history
           | of ransomware shows whenever the ransom was paid, the
           | attackers came back again to threat and solicit more money.
           | It's advised not to pay. But only the business owners could
           | have the right "feeling" as they are the only ones who
           | communicated with the attacker(s)
        
       | kornhole wrote:
       | This is another example of why we should use a unique email
       | address and password for each account. If credit card is needed,
       | use a virtual card. Otherwise one breach exposes our other
       | accounts to compromise. anonaddy.com, simplelogin.com, and
       | privacy.com are some of the services that help with this.
        
       | Aissen wrote:
       | A tip I learned recently: if you see a database with a simple
       | hash with no salt(md5, sha256...) like this, and you want to
       | migrate to a secure password hashing function (bcrypt, argon2...)
       | you don't need to wait for the users to re-login: simply do
       | bcrypt(md5(password)) immediately, and delete the old hashes, and
       | you get higher security.
        
         | stevewodil wrote:
         | Slightly related, in order to prevent super long passwords from
         | eating up CPU time is it better to hash using sha256 before
         | argon/bcrypt so that the length is constant, or is it better to
         | limit password length to some arbitrary number like 64
         | characters
        
           | 8organicbits wrote:
           | > Many implementations of bcrypt truncate the password to the
           | first 72 bytes, following the OpenBSD implementation.
           | 
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt
           | 
           | This sounds undesirable to me, so I'd support sha256 and an
           | alternative.
           | 
           | I'd also recommend adding a max password length to any API.
           | No point in allowing million character passwords.
        
             | 8organicbits wrote:
             | I'm guessing folks are reading that as endorsement or
             | sha256 over bcrypt. In context with the above post, this is
             | sha256 over truncation.
        
           | tzs wrote:
           | I've been tempted a few times to simply use salt and a single
           | iteration SHA-256 to store passwords, and put something like
           | this on the account creation and password change screens:
           | 
           | > If you care about the security of your account use a 20+
           | character random password and do not reuse that password at
           | any other sites. There are several excellent password
           | managers that can generate and remember such a password for
           | you and make it easy to use. Here's a list: <link to list of
           | password managers>.
           | 
           | > We allow all normal US printable characters in your
           | password: upper and lower case A-Z, digits, and <list of
           | punctuation>. Set your password generator to length 20+ and
           | to use mixed case, digits, and symbols and you will be fine.
           | 
           | > If you think you might have to manually type this password
           | at some point, you can use a reduced character set with a
           | longer password. If you use just mixed case letters and
           | digits make the password 22+ characters long. If you use just
           | mixed case letters make it 23+ characters. Letters all of the
           | same case? Make it 28+ characters. 32+ characters of hex is
           | fine, too. Heck, you can make it all digits if you use at
           | least 39 of them.
           | 
           | > If your password manager offers other options, such as
           | patterns like groups of digits or pronounceable syllables
           | separated by some symbol, that too is fine as long as you
           | make it long enough. Make it long enough that your password
           | manager gives it its highest strength rating.
           | 
           | > The exact upper limit on password length that our password
           | entry fields allow might vary from time to time as we update
           | the site, but will always be at least 64 characters.
        
           | DrBoring wrote:
           | > to prevent super long passwords from eating up CPU time
           | 
           | Is that why websites sometimes have low maximum password
           | length requirements ? Ex: must be less than 20 characters.
        
             | ThreeToZero wrote:
             | Super long is >100 character passwords. Not much point:
             | either the hash function is broken or some other hack will
             | happen before humanity develops enough compute power to
             | crack 100 char bcrypt passwords.
             | 
             | Websites (like some banks used to) that have less-than 20
             | char limits for passwords are purely bad security strategy.
        
               | GordonS wrote:
               | The number of sites that restrict passwords to 20
               | characters drives me nuts!
               | 
               | There needs to be a limit, yes, but surely something like
               | 100 characters, or even 50, would be more sensible.
        
               | BlueTemplar wrote:
               | And it's the same websites that tend to use the bad
               | practice of forcing the use of 2-4 "types" of
               | characters...
        
               | userbinator wrote:
               | _like some banks used to_
               | 
               | Banks all have systems that will stop you from attempting
               | to bruteforce them.
        
               | mooreds wrote:
               | You know what the worst is? When they limit you to, say,
               | 20 or 32 characters, but accept a longer password and
               | silently truncate it!
               | 
               | I've run across that at least once and it was a total
               | pain to troubleshoot and figure out.
        
             | colejohnson66 wrote:
             | The CPU usage difference between a hash on 20 bytes vs 100
             | (assuming ASCII) can't be that bad, can it?
        
           | mooreds wrote:
           | What's wrong with super long passwords eating up CPU time?
           | Can't imagine it is that prevalent with normal users and
           | there are other ways to deal with it if it is a vector for a
           | DOS attack (rate-limiting the number of registrations or
           | logins, for example).
           | 
           | NIST says there's no reason to limit password length any
           | more[0]:
           | 
           | "Memorized secrets SHALL be at least 8 characters in length
           | if chosen by the subscriber. Memorized secrets chosen
           | randomly by the CSP or verifier SHALL be at least 6
           | characters in length and MAY be entirely numeric. If the CSP
           | or verifier disallows a chosen memorized secret based on its
           | appearance on a blacklist of compromised values, the
           | subscriber SHALL be required to choose a different memorized
           | secret. No other complexity requirements for memorized
           | secrets SHOULD be imposed. A rationale for this is presented
           | in Appendix A Strength of Memorized Secrets."
           | 
           | 0: https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html
        
           | l-lousy wrote:
           | I think an average user password would be shorter than a
           | sha256 hash no?
        
             | LeifCarrotson wrote:
             | Bcrypt truncates to 72 bytes, so it's kind of irrelevant
             | IMO. Whether your average length is 12 or 20 or 64 bytes
             | doesn't matter much.
             | 
             | I expect the parent's concern came from experience with
             | PBKDF2, where the length is unbounded. It's good to
             | consider possible denial of service attacks: if someone
             | submits an enormous 1 MB password a PBKDF2 hasher can be
             | knocked offline for 60s. Sha256 will quickly crunch that
             | attack to a more manageable length.
        
         | dabeledo wrote:
         | > simply do bcrypt(md5(password))
         | 
         | This could also be problematic.
         | 
         | Password Shucking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQD3qDYMyYQ
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | Ok, some text with a 3 lines explanation of the attack,
           | instead of a 45 minutes video where it's explained somewhere
           | in less than a second:
           | 
           | https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/234794/is-
           | bcryp...
        
           | kobalsky wrote:
           | I wonder if adding a random salt for each account would help
           | in that situation?.
           | 
           | bcrypt(md5(password) + salt) + salt
           | 
           | the problem with password shucking would be that they just do
           | a bcrypt(md5) over the list of md5 hashes they have and check
           | if they exist in your database.
           | 
           | but if each hash is salted they would need to run every their
           | complete md5 hash list through bcrypt for each account
           | instead of once per database.
        
           | Aissen wrote:
           | Thanks for sharing this, TIL.
           | 
           | It's a very interesting attack, highly specific to the high-
           | number of breaches, high password reuse environment we're in
           | that enables at-scale password cracking.
           | 
           | I don't think it invalidates this advice completely. You
           | should watch the talk and eventually add a global pepper
           | (assuming it does not leak), and of course do the final
           | bcrypt(md5(pass)) -> bcrypt(pass) migration upon user login.
        
           | Shamii wrote:
           | It can be a good migration strategy. Just make sure to fix it
           | in first next Login of a user.
           | 
           | Still much better to have md5 directly in your db.
           | 
           | I fixed something like this just 4 years ago. :|
        
           | mpeg wrote:
           | Honestly, not as a big a deal as some people make it.
           | 
           | First off, you'd have to assume the attacker knows the bcrypt
           | hashes are bcrypt(md5(password)) - an attacker wouldn't
           | always know this
           | 
           | Also it assumes there is password reuse, but that the
           | password is strong enough that the md5 is uncracked.
        
             | Perseids wrote:
             | I'm also not quite sure about the circumstances where that
             | would be relevant, but on the StackExchange a sibling
             | comment found there is this further explanation:
             | 
             | > > I know I'm probably stupid but... how is this different
             | from a dictionary attack? Instead of trying a list of known
             | passwords, you try their md5s. If the md5 hasn't been
             | cracked before, chances are that the password is strong
             | enough to resist being cracked now. - nobody Jul 17 '20 at
             | 14:55
             | 
             | > Because there are plenty of MD5s in the wild that A) just
             | happen to not have been cracked yet because they weren't
             | interesting enough to stand out, but B) once an attacker
             | can figure out that that MD5 is inside a really
             | interesting, high-value-target bcrypt, they might spend a
             | lot more effort to crack that MD5. So it's not just a
             | dictionary attack; it's a dictionary attack of passwords
             | that are currently unknown but might be crackable with
             | additional effort. And that effort is much less than trying
             | to crack that password if it was only inside a pure bcrypt.
             | - Royce Williams Jul 17 '20 at 15:00
             | 
             | https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/234794/is-
             | bcryp...
             | 
             | So the assumption is: There is a breach A of an low-
             | interest target with MD5 hashes and a breach B of a high-
             | interest target with BCrypt(MD5) hashes. As A is not
             | interesting enough, people don't invest the time to crack
             | A's MD5s. But as B is super interesting they will use A as
             | a dictionary source to then know on which MD5s they should
             | invest a high amount of time, as it will help them crack
             | the high-interest target B. Note that no specific user
             | association takes place, like in the presentation about
             | password shucking by Sam Croley (above Youtube link), where
             | usernames/emails of A and B are correlated.
             | 
             | I think this is a bit more plausible than Croley's take on
             | it. Because if I have identified a high interest
             | individual, I would already invest a lot time to crack the
             | MD5 password.
             | 
             | And yes, what you said bears repeating: All of this attack
             | lives in the small space where the password is too strong
             | to be cracked from a simple MD5 hash when you are mildly
             | interested but not strong enough to prevent cracking when
             | you are deeply interested - for varying degrees of mildly
             | and deeply interested. Overall I would like to read about
             | real world examples where this made the difference and how
             | that password happened to fall into that region.
        
         | asddubs wrote:
         | for md5, you could also download some common password lists and
         | rehash at least the ones you can "crack"
        
         | danhoule wrote:
         | I believe that this is a great idea but I was kind of wondering
         | why people are not resorting to this method?
        
         | fps-hero wrote:
         | Great idea, but seeing as you are rearchitecting you might as
         | well add the salt to the MD5 while you are at it.
        
       | jjice wrote:
       | Tangentially related to this: Is storing passwords actually hard,
       | or is it knowing know to do things like this that is?
       | 
       | I've seen a lot of people on HN talk about how they never store
       | passwords because they don't want the liability, and I've seen
       | some talk about how they do since it's simple. In my experience,
       | hashing with Argon2 and keeping that in the DB (for toy personal
       | projects) has been very easy, especially to how scary keeping
       | passwords seems to have been made.
       | 
       | I guess my real question is: If I'm hashing with an actual
       | password acceptable hash method (salt and all), is there any
       | reason I shouldn't still do this? I'm legitimately interested,
       | because for all I know, I'm experiencing the Dunning-Kruger
       | effect.
        
         | web007 wrote:
         | Mostly A. Why bother with ever getting a password and having to
         | deal with it in any way, versus delegating that aspect of
         | security to a FAANG-level company with a > $1m security budget?
         | 
         | You can store your password yourself, sure, but how certain are
         | you that you're doing it "right" and that "right" today will be
         | good enough tomorrow? 15 years ago MD5 wasn't perfect, but it
         | was good enough versus the other common/stupid methods of
         | storing the password directly or storing it encrypted vs
         | hashed. How certain are you that Argon2 is going to stand the
         | test of time for another couple decades?
        
       | sysadm1n wrote:
       | Is there a database of subtitles besides Opensubtitles that we
       | can use as a fallback? It would be great if there was a Github
       | repo with a updated lists of .SRT files we can download at our
       | leisure.
       | 
       | Only caveats:
       | 
       | - Github wouldn't like millions flocking to a repo to grab files.
       | 
       | - I'm not sure sharing of subtitles fall under 'copyright
       | violations'. It's a bit of a grey area. (it's just text right?!)
        
         | Markoff wrote:
         | I use opensusbtitles only through VLsub in VLC, if I have to go
         | somewhere on my own (no susbs found on OS in VLC) I go to
         | subscene
        
         | sodality2 wrote:
         | > (it's just text right?!)
         | 
         | So are books unfortunately.
         | 
         | I would really love if there was an open subtitle repo though.
         | Hell I'd even help make it myself but xkcd/927 and whatnot.
        
         | FabHK wrote:
         | There's a python "app" called subliminal (with a simple CLI)
         | that handles the whole enchilada for you - identify the movie,
         | contact several subtitle dbs to download the appropriate
         | subtitles.
         | 
         | Not sure how up-to-date it is kept, but for me it works
         | reasonably well, except for obscure films.
         | 
         | https://github.com/Diaoul/subliminal
        
       | theplumber wrote:
       | Why do we learn that passwords are obsolate and webauthn is the
       | only sane choice?
        
         | 8organicbits wrote:
         | I believe webauthn requires end users to perform key
         | management. I suspect that is currently a harder task for the
         | average user than a memorized or written-down password. Special
         | hardware tokens may help, but I'm not sure how we'd convince
         | average users to care or buy them.
         | 
         | Are there any webauthn only sites, besides demos?
        
           | nybble41 wrote:
           | The end user's agent (browser) should handle the key
           | management behind the scenes. Even without hardware tokens
           | it's still at least as good as a software-based password
           | manager. A Hierarchical Deterministic key system similar to
           | the BIP32 scheme used by most Bitcoin wallets[0] would only
           | require a single master private key per user to support any
           | number of unrelated identities. That key could be generated
           | from a master password, synced to each device through an
           | enrollment process, or stored on a hardware token.
           | 
           | [0] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.medi
           | awi...
        
             | 8organicbits wrote:
             | This is new to me, thanks.
             | 
             | Do you know how that supports use cases like if someone
             | wants to change their flight from a hotel computer? I
             | wouldn't want to expose a "master password" to a computer I
             | didn't trust.
        
               | nybble41 wrote:
               | If you don't trust the computer then your best option is
               | a hardware token like the Trezor (which already supports
               | WebAuthn in addition to its cryptocurrency functions).
               | The better ones will include a screen where you can see
               | details like which site you're signing into before
               | confirming the request. Either way, the host computer
               | never gets access to any private keys. It can still do
               | whatever it wants with your login session on that site,
               | though, so you'll want to be careful about logging in to
               | sensitive sites from untrusted PCs. The same applies to
               | password-based logins, of course; moreover, any password
               | you've entered into a public PC should immediately be
               | considered compromised and changed (from a secure device)
               | at the earliest opportunity.
               | 
               | Given any choice in the matter I would suggest using your
               | own equipment to change the flight (e.g. a smartphone),
               | even if it's less convenient.
        
       | morelish wrote:
       | I wonder how the hacker got network access to the database? I
       | couldn't work out from what I read. It said the DB had a weak
       | superuser password. But it didn't say how the hacker managed to
       | make network calls to the DB. Presumably there was some initial
       | entry point to get inside the network? It sounds like maybe the
       | web-application user verification was poor and the app allowed
       | admin users to make arbitrary DB calls?
        
         | mustardo wrote:
         | > was able to hack the low security password of a SuperAdmin,
         | and gained access to an unsecured script, which was available
         | only for SuperAdmins. This script allowed him to perform SQL
         | injections and extract the data.
         | 
         | Depending on the injection vulnerability data can be
         | exfiltrated, there are tools like sqlmap https://sqlmap.org/
         | which make it pretty easy to dump tables via injection
        
           | morelish wrote:
           | Ah I see, it was the website user SuperAdmin the hacker got
           | into. Cheers.
        
             | mustardo wrote:
             | Thats my understanding, I initially thought MySQL root user
             | as well
        
       | gsich wrote:
       | I recommend subscene.com for a no-hassle way to download
       | subtitles.
        
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