[HN Gopher] A decade of Have I Been Pwned
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A decade of Have I Been Pwned
        
       Author : c5karl
       Score  : 407 points
       Date   : 2023-12-04 16:26 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.troyhunt.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.troyhunt.com)
        
       | user_7832 wrote:
       | > Not to mention all the other weird variations including
       | haveibeenburned.com, haveigotpwned.com, haveibeenrekt.com and
       | after someone made the suggestion following the revelation that
       | PornHub follows me, haveibeenfucked.com
       | 
       | That is honestly pretty hilarious of a side effect of media fame!
        
         | gumby wrote:
         | > haveibeenfucked.com
         | 
         | Years ago we had friends, a couple in which the wife was
         | pregnant. They were actually a bit embarrassed that "everyone
         | will know that we 'did it'". A level of squeamishishness I
         | could not have imagined!
        
           | lainga wrote:
           | Haha, yes, for the same reason it used to be rude to ask
           | "when are you expecting?", especially if newly married
        
             | romanhn wrote:
             | "Still practicing" is as good an answer as any
        
             | lainga wrote:
             | (too late to edit...) P.S. Not in the sense of "when will
             | you have a baby", in the sense of "was the baby conceived
             | before the marriage"
        
           | onionisafruit wrote:
           | That reminds me of my early twenties being embarrassed when
           | my wife told her parents we are trying to get pregnant.
        
           | koolba wrote:
           | > They were actually a bit embarrassed that "everyone will
           | know that we 'did it'".
           | 
           | Most people would be more embarrassed if the wife is clearly
           | pregnant and nobody thinks they "did it".
        
             | yesbabyyes wrote:
             | I remember reading about something like that in a book,
             | think they were called Mary & Joseph.
        
         | m3047 wrote:
         | I've always loved pornhub's blog:
         | https://www.pornhub.com/insights/
        
         | Cthulhu_ wrote:
         | That last one would be an interesting repository of revenge
         | porn, although it's illegal to distribute it in a lot of
         | jurisdictions.
         | 
         | Although, maybe it could be a database of facial recognition
         | hashes from revenge porn, and you can upload a similar hash of
         | your own face to see if you're online somewhere?
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | It just proves that rules of the internet work. If it exists,
         | there's a porn version of it.
        
       | moose44 wrote:
       | For those privacy focused, here's how you can remove your
       | information from their public search ability.
       | 
       | https://haveibeenpwned.com/OptOut
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | You have to solve a Google ReCaptcha though, which privacy-
         | focused folks won't like.
         | 
         | Also, just FYI, "The controller of the domain your email
         | address is on will still see you in domain searches."
        
           | randunel wrote:
           | To merely use the service, you have to solve a seemingly
           | infinite cycle of hcaptchas from cloudflare, this recaptcha
           | is much more decent to users from 3rd world countries!
        
         | ziddoap wrote:
         | Seems slightly useless to opt-out of HIBP when your email is
         | still in Collection #1 or Anti Public Combo List or whatever.
         | 
         | Anyone wanting to do something nefarious with the emails will
         | surely download the full source lists rather than try and
         | scrape the aggregation site.
        
           | blibble wrote:
           | he's become a very tempting target in himself that gets more
           | tempting with each additional database added
           | 
           | I wonder if he actually deletes the data...
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | This is a call for service providers in these dumps to move
             | to Passkeys faster, not for the data to be redacted or
             | censored. You want to decay the value of the credentials as
             | rapidly as possible once exposure has been determined. This
             | aligns with NIST guidance around secrets rotation.
             | 
             | Once a breach is determined, all of these passwords should
             | be invalidated immediately and require a password reset if
             | you're so behind you're not offering Passkeys or SSO. Rate
             | limiting will slow credential spraying attacks, but the
             | only way to eliminate them is to use SSO ("Login with") or
             | Passkeys. You are negligent as a provider if you are not
             | invalidating leaked credentials in a timely manner.
             | 
             | https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-FAQ/#q-b05
             | 
             | > "Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be
             | changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically). However,
             | verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence of
             | compromise of the authenticator."
             | 
             | > Users tend to choose weaker memorized secrets when they
             | know that they will have to change them in the near future.
             | When those changes do occur, they often select a secret
             | that is similar to their old memorized secret by applying a
             | set of common transformations such as increasing a number
             | in the password. This practice provides a false sense of
             | security if any of the previous secrets has been
             | compromised since attackers can apply these same common
             | transformations. But if there is evidence that the
             | memorized secret has been compromised, such as by a breach
             | of the verifier's hashed password database or observed
             | fraudulent activity, subscribers should be required to
             | change their memorized secrets. However, this event-based
             | change should occur rarely, so that they are less motivated
             | to choose a weak secret with the knowledge that it will
             | only be used for a limited period of time.
        
               | prepend wrote:
               | > This is a call for service providers in these dumps to
               | move to Passkeys faster
               | 
               | Does it really matter? I think all of my accounts use
               | 20char autogenerated passwords from google that are
               | unique for each account. So if one is breached, it's just
               | breached. Seems to have the same protection as a passkey.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | You are the outlier. This is not the norm. Passkeys do
               | this for the broad public, with the keys backed up to
               | ecosystem cloud storage and defended by strong security
               | systems at Apple and Google. Lets not argue passkey
               | sovereignty in this thread, there are efforts ongoing to
               | make them exportable so you can manage them in password
               | managers. I agree it is a valid concern to prevent
               | ecosystems holding users hostage.
               | 
               | Long strings in password managers was a shim until
               | Passkeys got here, because passwords suck. This is a well
               | worn path in enterprise with PKI. Passkeys are PKI for
               | the Average Joe. Folks here will always have esoteric
               | auth use cases, but you design for the average on this
               | topic (consumer auth).
               | 
               | https://passkeys.directory/
               | 
               | https://passkeys.2fa.directory/us/
               | 
               | https://bitwarden.com/blog/a-closer-look-at-password-
               | statist...
               | 
               | > 19% of respondents said they used "password" as their
               | password (!!!)
               | 
               | > 52% use easily identifiable information in their
               | passwords, such as company/brand names, well-known song
               | lyrics, pet names, and names of loved ones
               | 
               | > Best practices are still diluted by bad habits, with
               | 85% reusing passwords across multiple sites and 58%
               | relying on memory for their passwords
               | 
               | > A majority (68%) of respondents manage passwords for
               | 10+ sites or apps and yet 84% of respondents reuse
               | passwords
               | 
               | > More than half of respondents forget and reset their
               | passwords on a regular basis
               | 
               | > Around a quarter (20%) were affected by breaches and a
               | majority (80%) were prompted to reset their passwords
               | 
               | > Over half (56%) are excited about passwordless options,
               | and 50% are using or would use 'something you are' forms
               | of passwordless authentication
        
               | c0nfused wrote:
               | As someone who is not at all excited about passkeys, I
               | think they are just moving the average user into an
               | existing enterprise. The enterprise being whatever Big
               | Tech Company you trust the most. Then you gotta pass
               | through one of the "trustworthy" tech companies to access
               | anything, which is simultaneously great and also a huge
               | ask as most of them are data vacuums.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | As someone who has to defend against credential spraying
               | in a consumer IAM system at a fintech (which leads to
               | financial and identity fraud), I am very excited about
               | Passkeys. Perspectives will be driven by incentives and
               | desired outcomes. I have the Cloudflare dashboard for our
               | properties live and keep an eye on threat actors in
               | realtime, as well as our identity provider dashboard
               | around realtime Passkey uptake (at which point passwords
               | are invalidated and unable to be downgraded back to).
               | Providing a government credential can be used to
               | bootstrap account recovery if all passkeys are lost.
               | 
               | If you have concerns about Big Tech treating Passkeys in
               | an anti competitive fashion, I would strongly encourage
               | you to file a complaint with the FTC when that evidence
               | is observed (as I mention in another comment here [1]).
               | We need these primitives to deliver a better digital
               | experience but also need to defend against fuckery using
               | legal and regulatory mechanisms.
               | 
               | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38502886
        
               | prepend wrote:
               | People using passkeys are the outlier too.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Google (top site for internet traffic) is defaulting to
               | Passkeys: https://blog.google/technology/safety-
               | security/passkeys-defa... (Gmail has over 1.8 billion
               | active users as of 2023; 22.22% of the world's population
               | uses Google's mail service, so this is material for
               | Passkey uptake)
               | 
               | Amazon: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-
               | passwordless-...
               | 
               | Uber: https://help.uber.com/riders/article/using-
               | passkeys-to-sign-...
               | 
               | Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/help/account/signing-
               | account/signing-ac...
               | 
               | Github: https://github.blog/2023-09-21-passkeys-are-
               | generally-availa...
               | 
               | Link by Stripe: https://app.link.com/
               | 
               | Docusign: https://www.docusign.com/blog/docusign-
               | customers-can-upgrade...
               | 
               | Tiktok: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/passkeys-fido-
               | alliance (TikTok has over 1.677 billion users globally,
               | out of which 1.1 billion are its monthly active users)
               | 
               | Google's Titan key now supports Passkeys if you need a
               | secure hardware authenticator:
               | https://www.wired.com/story/google-titan-security-key-
               | passke... | https://store.google.com/us/product/titan_sec
               | urity_key?hl=en...
        
               | prepend wrote:
               | These stats are supports passkeys, not how many users use
               | them.
               | 
               | I like passkeys, they're nice.
               | 
               | But I think you want to compare passkey users to complex
               | password users.
               | 
               | I know lots of "normies" and they all just accept
               | whatever their iPhone does. Which is creates a high
               | entropy unique password for each site.
        
               | waynesonfire wrote:
               | absolutely, password managers have deprecated have i been
               | pwned. It probably does more harm than good now.
        
           | sunnybeetroot wrote:
           | Wouldn't it be hashed?
        
         | Sephr wrote:
         | Do they have a domain-level opt-out?
        
       | mike_d wrote:
       | It is worth noting the user awareness impact HaveIBeenPwned has
       | had.
       | 
       | On the other hand, I feel like SpyCloud does not get enough
       | credit for having a dataset 30x bigger and working directly with
       | companies to actually mitigate credential reuse. If you've ever
       | been prompted at login to a major website or received an email
       | asking you to reset a password because it was used in multiple
       | places, there is a good chance SpyCloud is behind it.
        
         | ziddoap wrote:
         | > _On the other hand, I feel like SpyCloud does not get enough
         | credit for having a dataset 30x bigger and working directly
         | with companies to actually mitigate credential reuse_
         | 
         | Not sure if it is your intent, but this implies that HIBP does
         | not work directly with companies to mitigate credential re-use.
         | It does. Some examples would be their partnership with
         | 1Password and other password managers, Firefox, their
         | partnership with the FBI, UK & Australian governments, etc.
        
           | mike_d wrote:
           | It would be like comparing HN to Facebook, they are both
           | technically operating social media sites but I don't think
           | anyone would argue they are doing so at the same scale. HIBP
           | ultimately is a hobby project that was really good at
           | bringing the publics attention to the problem and booting
           | Troy's social profile.
        
         | specto wrote:
         | Hrm, a free service that helps millions of people vs a company
         | that requires a subscription for any use. I don't think you're
         | comparing apples to apples, and the latter is not useful at all
         | for most people.
        
       | heroprotagonist wrote:
       | In the past decade, I wonder how many stalker victims have
       | discovered HaveIBeenPwned as the easy directing tool that their
       | abuser used to discover and invade their accounts and privacy..
       | 
       | Yes, yes, I know, the site maintains that it's the victim's
       | responsibility, prior to any bad actor taking advantage of the
       | service, to sign up and then disable their information from
       | showing up in the search.
       | 
       | Because the shock and awe of other users seeing 'Your info is out
       | there!' immediately after entering their address, instead of
       | after some kind of email verification, is more important than
       | user safety.
        
         | Kwpolska wrote:
         | E-mail verification would make the service much more costly to
         | run, maybe not sustainable.
         | 
         | If you've got someone's email address, do you really need HIBP
         | to figure out where it's used? Wouldn't Google give you a lot
         | of results already?
        
           | heroprotagonist wrote:
           | Yes, you enter an email and you get a list of the hacks it's
           | been found in, along with the type of data that's in the data
           | breach.
           | 
           | At that point you just go grab the data breach from some
           | other location and pull the data. Including passwords, which
           | will often be reused across other services and give you
           | access to other accounts. The breach data (or subsequent
           | accounts accessed from the passwords) may have a lot of
           | additional data, like location, personal preferences, message
           | contents, etc..
           | 
           | It's _much_ more impactful than simply Googling someone's
           | email address.
        
             | tokamak-teapot wrote:
             | "Just go grab the data breach from some other location"
             | 
             | Do you have examples you can point to where this has
             | happened? I would be interested in cases where this kind of
             | approach has been taken, as my intuition is that Troy's
             | service wouldn't make this significantly easier or cheaper.
        
               | heroprotagonist wrote:
               | It would definitely make this significantly easier and
               | cheaper.
               | 
               | Imagine you want data on a specific individual. You can
               | locate and obtain ALL available data breaches, then
               | search through each one individually looking for
               | references to your target. OR, you can enter their email
               | into a search and get back a list of which SPECIFIC data
               | breaches have information on your target AND the types of
               | information included in the breach. This narrows the
               | scope of effort by orders of magnitude.
               | 
               | How does that not make it significantly easier and
               | cheaper?
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | I agree. It's kind of worse because it gives attackers 90% of
         | the information they need, but it doesn't tell the victims what
         | data was leaked. I want to see the hash so I can figure out
         | which password was compromised.
        
       | prepend wrote:
       | I really like his informative posts. I remember reading about how
       | he used k-anonymity to check passwords against the pwned file
       | without having to transmit the passwords and it led to me
       | studying that and later using it for some professional projects.
       | 
       | I sometimes think what I would have done had I never read his
       | posts about checking without transmitting real PII.
        
         | gnyman wrote:
         | The k-anonymity is such a clever trick, I remember being
         | impressed by the simplicity and efficacy of it back when I read
         | about it also.
         | 
         | I'd also like to call out the one who Troy says suggested him
         | [1], Junade Ali who goes into more details about this in his
         | post about it [2]
         | 
         | Not because Junade would have invented it (apparently that was
         | Pierangela Samarati, Latanya Sweeney and Tore Dalenius. [3])
         | but because his blog post on it is a really great explainer of
         | it using concepts software developers are familiar with.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.troyhunt.com/ive-just-launched-pwned-
         | passwords-v... [2] https://blog.cloudflare.com/validating-
         | leaked-passwords-with... [3]
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity
        
       | adameasterling wrote:
       | Troy Hunt is such a treasure. And for us web application
       | developers, there is no excuse for not having protection against
       | credential stuffing! While the best defense is likely two-factor
       | [1], checking against Hunt's hashed password database is also
       | very good and requires no extra work for users!
       | 
       | I don't have anything to back this up, but my guess is that the
       | vast majority of compromised user accounts comes from credential
       | stuffing/password re-use. It's really surprising to me when I
       | hear that huge companies don't do this check.[2] It's simple,
       | easy, takes about a day to set up.
       | 
       | If you're a young CTO or early-stage engineer working on a web
       | app and have never been targeted with a credential stuffing
       | attack, let me tell you: It's coming! It's just a matter of time
       | before it's 1AM and your phone blows up; your site is getting
       | hammered; you think it's DDOS, but then realize most of the hits
       | are on your login page, then realize that and then realize with a
       | horrible feeling that some % of those hits are getting through
       | the login page. You'll be up all night dealing with it, and then
       | you have to make breach notifications, and that really sucks.
       | 
       | Troy Hunt's free database will save you that heartache
       | (probably). Just do it.
       | 
       | 1.
       | https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Credential_St...
       | 
       | 2. Like 23andMe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37794379
        
         | LeifCarrotson wrote:
         | > ... and then realize with a horrible feeling that some % of
         | those hits are getting through the login page.
         | 
         | The alternative is the exact same scenario, except that the
         | percentage is several orders of magnitude lower, right?
         | 
         | The small subset of your users that explicitly opted-out of
         | 2-factor authentication (if you allow that) and who try to
         | choose "Password1!" with a second exclamation point when your
         | site said "Error, your password has seen 83,000 times in
         | password dumps, please use a unique password" will still get
         | hacked.
         | 
         | Or is your expectation that no one will attack every user on
         | your webapp with a credential stuffing attempt if they see that
         | the probability of success is 0.001% instead of 1%?
        
           | mulmen wrote:
           | The bad feeling comes from knowing you could have reasonably
           | done something to mitigate the harm. Don't let perfect be the
           | enemy of good.
           | 
           | Remember that "identity theft" is marketing fluff. In a
           | credential stuffing attack _your business is the victim of
           | fraud_.
        
           | adameasterling wrote:
           | Yes, same scenario, but far fewer logins are successful. 3
           | orders of magnitude sounds right, but I don't know precise
           | numbers. (Can others shed light?) Three orders of magnitude
           | is a lot!
        
           | cedilla wrote:
           | Wait, a thousand fold decrease is not worth it?
           | 
           | Your numbers literally turns a scenario where 200,000
           | accounts are hacked into one where 200 are exposed. Or one
           | where 30 hacked accounts turn into 0 hacked accounts.
           | 
           | There is a point where a difference in quantity becomes a
           | difference in quality. I far prefer the latter scenarios.
        
             | cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
             | Anybody (like GP) that doesn't understand that this is
             | entirely the nature of security work, should not be making
             | any material decisions about security.
             | 
             | The number of times I've seen DEVELOPERS neglect to
             | implement materially useful security measures because
             | "they're not technically perfect!" Is astounding.
        
         | rockskon wrote:
         | About a decade back, I was at an event that had an FBI employee
         | presenting. During his presentation, he had mentioned a story
         | of a sys admin who had been arrested for taking a hashed PW
         | database in his company, comparing the hashes against known
         | compromised one's (perhaps from haveibeenpwned?), and forced a
         | password reset for everyone who had reused a password that had
         | separately been compromised and sent an email to each employee
         | explaining this.
         | 
         | One of the employees was apoplectic at the actions of the sys
         | admin and had accused him of violating her privacy by doing
         | this. While I do not recall which party initiated legal action
         | against the sys admin that led to his arrest (i.e. the employee
         | or the company), the bottom line of the story was that the FBI
         | employee (and, by extention, whichever judge was involved in
         | adjudication the case) considered the act of a sys admin
         | accessing password hashes placed under his care to be a
         | criminal breach of privacy regardless of his intent being to
         | improve his company's security against password stuffing
         | attacks.
         | 
         | Assuming the FBI employee didn't just make the whole thing up
         | (which I have no reason to believe - there are _a lot_ of tech-
         | stupid judges and, especially a decade ago, tech-stupid FBI
         | employees), it might be prudent to pass this by your legal team
         | before checking for password hashes for your employees being in
         | haveibeenpwned.
        
           | incahoots wrote:
           | Well this unlocked a new fear I didn't know I needed to have.
           | I suppose this is the massive drawback to allowing dinosaurs
           | to spearhead policy and govern laws.
        
             | rockskon wrote:
             | For what it's worth, the average tech-smarts in the legal
             | realm and within the FBI are significantly improved
             | compared to 8 years ago. This is just from my personal
             | observation.
             | 
             | That said, there are still tremendous gaps yet to be
             | bridged with the understanding of many procecutors and
             | lawyers as well as weird applications of the law that
             | aren't intuitive to people whose life is technology.
             | 
             | For example (and I caveat this with IANAL): Did you know
             | the physical medium you get Internet to your house
             | determines what laws and processes the government can use
             | to monitor your Internet traffic?
        
               | incahoots wrote:
               | >Did you know the physical medium you get Internet to
               | your house determines what laws and processes the
               | government can use to monitor your Internet traffic?
               | 
               | That I did know, only because I was dumb enough to hitch
               | my wagon to Comcast/Xfinity as a headend tech for years.
               | Just affirmed the idea that all ISPs should be community
               | owned.
        
               | eszed wrote:
               | > the physical medium you get Internet to your house
               | determines what laws and processes the government can use
               | to monitor your Internet traffic?
               | 
               | I did not! Do you have / know a good explanation of the
               | details?
        
           | kranke155 wrote:
           | I would love to get a proper source on this. Seems a bit
           | crazy, and wouldn't this be thrown out on appeal?
        
             | rockskon wrote:
             | Unfortunately I have no source to give. The FBI employee
             | was just giving an example of illegal behavior he knew of.
             | He didn't cite jurisdiction or the names of people
             | involved. Hell - even if he did, I likely wouldn't have
             | remembered it as this was roughly 8 years ago I was in the
             | audience for this (I know I said roughly a decade ago in my
             | prior post - but I checked a receipt for the event and it
             | was in 2015).
        
               | vasco wrote:
               | Really hard to belief without anything else to go by.
               | This sounds like old wives tales like people that add
               | disclaimers saying they aren't laywers when they comment
               | on the internet because someone once told them they heard
               | someone got in trouble.
        
             | virtue3 wrote:
             | Jobs can ask if you have ever been arrested outside of CA.
             | (Note: not convicted of a crime).
             | 
             | Also you are going to spend a long time being arrested
             | before the appeal goes out.
             | 
             | "In California, a criminal appeal can take several months
             | to several years. The length of time depends on the
             | complexity of the case and how quickly it moves through the
             | appeals process."
        
           | TacticalCoder wrote:
           | Accessing password hashes already in a DB is not the same as
           | preventing, during account creation, the reuse of a password
           | known to be compromised.
           | 
           | If I'm not mistaken it's all done using cryptographic schemes
           | that leak neither the password nor the hash.
        
             | adameasterling wrote:
             | This is true. The story as written probably didn't happen
             | with HIBP's database. Troy Hunt's database only includes
             | SHA-1 hashes, and passwords in your own database will be
             | hashed with a stronger algorithm (hopefully) and salted
             | (hopefully), so you can't do a simple hash-to-hash
             | comparison. The way to do a HIBP check is, when a user
             | signs in, you hash their password in the way HIBP expects,
             | and check that against either their API or against a local
             | copy of HIBP's database, and if a hit is returned, you give
             | them a nice message and direct them to the password reset
             | flow. There's no easy way to use HIBP's data to identify
             | users with compromised passwords until users actually try
             | to log in.
        
           | adameasterling wrote:
           | The FBI feeds data into Troy Hunt's database and FBI Director
           | Christopher Wray gave Troy Hunt a medal for his work [1].
           | 
           | The Open Web Application Security Project's Application
           | Security Verification Standard recommends that you do a
           | hashed password check [2].
           | 
           | For bigger companies, sure, go talk to legal, but for young
           | startups, my feeling is it's not worth the $200 or whatever
           | your counsel will charge to say it's ok. I personally did not
           | ask anyone (am cto), I just added the check.
           | 
           | 1. https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/1674132801837477888
           | 
           | 2. See OWASP ASVS 4.0 2.1.7 https://github.com/OWASP/ASVS/blo
           | b/master/4.0/en/0x11-V2-Aut...
        
             | rockskon wrote:
             | The whole situation did seem pretty exceptional when I
             | heard it and I felt like I was being exposed to an
             | alternate reality where lawyers made security worse for
             | everyone.
             | 
             | That said I struggle to believe the sys admin had competent
             | representation.
        
               | CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
               | They forced a password reset. You can use HIBT data in a
               | way that's less disruptive.
        
           | CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
           | > sys admin accessing password hashes placed under his care
           | 
           | Parent commenter never mentioned anything about comparing
           | stored password hashes. What you do is block bad passwords at
           | password set time by hashing the prospective password and
           | comparing with HIBP. A prospective password you haven't
           | accepted or stored or transmitted off the application server
           | - common sense says that's not a privacy violation - and many
           | giant companies including my employer do this routinely.
           | 
           | [Edit] Oh yea I remember HIBP has an online API. Don't use
           | this. Take the HIBP dumps that they make freely available and
           | compare locally. If not for reasons of privacy, for reasons
           | of simplicity and removing an unnecessary external
           | business/legal/software dependency.
        
             | Vicinity9635 wrote:
             | Ideally, but what if you're a new hire and the passwords
             | already exist?
        
               | CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
               | Be satisfied with fixing the new passwords going forward.
               | Or gracefully force a new password for everyone, if
               | circumstances permit that (circumstances including
               | decision making authority; if you are the new CTO or
               | CISO, and you're paranoid about reviewing the existing
               | hashes, you should strongly consider the batched graceful
               | forced reset!)
               | 
               | You can set a flag on login to use the password in memory
               | rather than stored.
        
               | uxp8u61q wrote:
               | That's how you get the whole company to love you as a new
               | CTO - force everyone to change their password, including
               | people who have a strong non-reused password.
        
           | brianpan wrote:
           | Besides legal, I think it's important to realize that there
           | is a very emotional response to discovering that your
           | password is not good.
           | 
           | I know a company that started doing quarterly brute-forcing
           | of passwords as a security check and the reaction to finding
           | out that your password is not strong enough is....all sorts
           | of emotions.
           | 
           | If you have a 10-12 character password that may have been
           | strong at one point but now is not and your IT team is
           | informing you, you're reaction is NEVER, oh thank you for
           | helping me out. It's not stupidity, it's human nature to feel
           | attacked.
        
         | KolmogorovComp wrote:
         | > ... and then realize with a horrible feeling that some % of
         | those hits are getting through the login page.
         | 
         | (Non sarcastic), why would you feel bad for users using 1234 as
         | their passwords? Unless your website is aimed at vulnerable
         | people, I consider this to be their responsibility.
         | 
         | As other comments have said these users will probably go the
         | easiest route (1234websitename) to fix the error.
         | 
         | Any restriction you put on your password field reduces entropy,
         | and safety for everyone (even if marginally so).
        
           | cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
           | Because anyone that has ever been responsible for anything
           | knows that there's a difference between something being your
           | fault and something being your problem.
           | 
           | Breach notification etc legislation in some jurisdictions
           | will also require that you report successful widespread
           | credential stuffing.
           | 
           | Even AWS with their "shared responsibility model" works with
           | GitHub etc to ensure that programmatic access credentials
           | aren't accidentally exposed via public repositories. This
           | isn't credential stuffing, but it's a blindingly accurate
           | demonstration of the fact that drawing a line in the sand and
           | saying "users, work it out from here!" and attempting to wash
           | your hands of the situation is nothing more than the ill-
           | informed pipe dream of someone that's never had to deal with
           | this stuff in reality.
        
         | santiagobasulto wrote:
         | Sorry, I don't understand the procedure. If the database
         | contains hashed passwords (I haven't seen or download the
         | database), how can you know you're using the same salt and
         | method that the one in the datbase?
         | 
         | For example, let's say Tumblr was hacked and with it my
         | password `hunter2`. Tumbler used some naive HMAC-MD5 method
         | with a salt, but my site uses argon2 with (obviously) a
         | different salt. Even though my password is the same (`hunter2`)
         | the resulting hashed passwords will be different. How is this
         | any effective preventing credential stuffing?
        
           | adameasterling wrote:
           | One can only implement a HIBP check when one has access to
           | the user's unhashed password. So, at login, registration, and
           | password reset.
        
             | santiagobasulto wrote:
             | Yes, exactly, so that's why I was asking, you mentioned the
             | database was of hashed passwords. The database then
             | contains the source passwords? And you're preventing the
             | user from using one of those passwords?
             | 
             | Sorry, I still don't understand the procedure you mentioned
             | and I'm genuinely curious.
        
               | adameasterling wrote:
               | Oh, I see the issue. The HIBP database is SHA-1 hashed
               | with no salt. It was created from unhashed passwords. You
               | can't download the unhashed version (you could of course
               | compute it, if you really wanted to; but there's no
               | need).
               | 
               | So, the procedure you need to implement is, on
               | login/registration/pw reset, you SHA-1 hash the user's
               | unhashed password and do a indexed lookup on your copy of
               | HIBP's database. Or if you don't want to maintain that
               | copy, you can use HIBP's API to do something similar.
        
               | santiagobasulto wrote:
               | Ah! Thanks a lot, it now makes sense. So at some point
               | HIBP has the unhashed passwords, they obviously don't
               | make those public, good trick. How do you handle this
               | from a UX perspective? Just tell the user that password
               | is "not strong enough"?
        
           | Denvercoder9 wrote:
           | The HIBP database only stores hashes of leaked passwords, but
           | the source material is often (always?) plaintext passwords.
           | If the hash of a password is in the HIBP database, the
           | plaintext password is out there somewhere in a database of a
           | malicious actor.
        
       | craignatic wrote:
       | he shouldn't have mentioned goatse, or told me not to google it.
       | my curious brain took me to a rabbit hole where several times i
       | wished i didnt have eyes.
        
         | IsoldesKnight wrote:
         | Let me be the one to tell you not to look up tubgirl or
         | meatspin. The turn-of-the millennium internet was a dirty
         | place.
        
           | TruffleMuffin wrote:
           | When you know how old someone is by the fact they don't know
           | any of those things.
        
           | m4jor wrote:
           | make lemon parties great again
        
           | jimmySixDOF wrote:
           | too true and for some reason there was a rule like the worse
           | the content the faster it would
           | download/torrent/kazaa/limewire/etc lol
        
         | Cthulhu_ wrote:
         | Oh you sweet summer child.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | what's the learning curve of a GenZer? When boomer says don't
         | look this up on the internet, it's not because they want the
         | information for themselves. It's because they already have
         | something burned into the memories, and are hoping to save you
         | from the same.
        
           | unaindz wrote:
           | It's human nature to be curious and nothing to be ashamed of.
           | And if someone really doesn't want you looking into
           | something, they won't even mention it.
        
         | InCityDreams wrote:
         | ...and THAT'S how easy to scam someone.
        
         | bigstrat2003 wrote:
         | You get kind of immune to it eventually. At this point I don't
         | even get fazed by goatse, if anything I'm more impressed by
         | just how far that guy managed to stretch.
        
       | hk1337 wrote:
       | > I get on my jet ski and I do whatever the fuck I want
       | 
       | Is Troy Hunt a Mobius variant?
        
       | wharvle wrote:
       | Reminds me I really need to do something about those _checks
       | notes_ 99 compromised accounts in my password manager.
        
       | agentultra wrote:
       | Blackmail scammers have been using pwned password databases to
       | craft some pretty convincing phishing emails ("I have installed
       | RAT on your system and have been watching you through your
       | webcam, proof I hacked you: <old password from pwned passwords>
       | -- send $1800 of BTC to this address and don't go to the police.
       | Maybe use a password manager next time."). Do people get caught
       | in these scams?
       | 
       | I assume most get blocked by spam filters. I've only noticed them
       | when they get past SPI/DKIM filtering and I have to train more.
       | They seem pretty clever.
       | 
       | I appreciate the service and enjoy Troy Hunt's posts. HIBP is
       | great.
        
         | _benj wrote:
         | I mean, I once got an email with my password in plain text and
         | it was pretty disturbing. I did a quick search and realized
         | that that password wasn't used in anything I cared about so, I
         | just went about my day, still disturbed but knowing that it's
         | an old password.
         | 
         | I can't imagine how it would feel if I didn't use a password
         | manager and couldn't quickly see where was that password used
         | instead of wreaking my brain trying to remember!
        
         | cafard wrote:
         | Caught, I can't say. I have heard of users becoming alarmed and
         | running to IT for reassurance.
         | 
         | I got one or two of these emails, and couldn't for the life of
         | me guess on what sites I had used the (pretty weak) passwords.
        
       | Vicinity9635 wrote:
       | Anybody been in more than 20 data breeches?
       | 
       | All my stuff's been locked down with a password manager/2fa so
       | I'm not worried, but having been on the internet for ages it's
       | pretty funny at this point.
        
         | iamacyborg wrote:
         | One of my accounts is apparently in 32 breaches
        
       | Sephr wrote:
       | I have memories of this site providing me with an excellent
       | experience. Now it's just a cash-grab, asking for $169.50/year
       | just to see 100 breached accounts!
       | 
       | I use unique email addresses (breach canaries) on every website
       | to detect when sites leak my data. When I tried to search for my
       | domain results with a previous domain ownership verification, I
       | got hit with this error: "In order to search a domain with any
       | more than 10 breached accounts on it, you need a sufficiently
       | sized subscription"
       | 
       | I'd be willing to pay $5-12/year. These rates are outrageous for
       | such a low-overhead service.
        
         | benced wrote:
         | You're doing a weird thing (running your own email domain),
         | doing an even weirder thing (using a different address per
         | site), and then doing an even more weirder thing (scanning your
         | personal domain for breaches) and your supposition is that very
         | specific use case is a cash cow for Troy Hunt? Come on.
        
           | dotancohen wrote:
           | I do the exact same thing. Every site, service, and contact
           | gets a personal something@mydomain email address to reach me.
        
             | cheschire wrote:
             | Somewhere in the distance, the Count from Sesame Street
             | says "TWO... ah ah ah..."
        
           | Sephr wrote:
           | I said cash-grab, not cash cow. A cash grab is something that
           | has an unreasonably high profit margin. A cash cow is
           | something that provides a significant portion of an entity's
           | income.
           | 
           | I have no idea if HIBP is a cash cow for Troy. It may be,
           | given these prices, but I don't know much about his other
           | sources of income.
           | 
           | HIBP didn't start out as a cash-grab, but it is one now. Troy
           | could have chosen to price it reasonably to cover the costs
           | of the service. This is clearly taking advantage of HIBP's
           | popularity as the de-facto breach list.
        
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