[HN Gopher] NIST: Personal Identity Verification (PIV) of Federa...
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       NIST: Personal Identity Verification (PIV) of Federal Employees and
       Contractors
        
       Author : stefankuehnel
       Score  : 104 points
       Date   : 2024-03-23 14:04 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nvlpubs.nist.gov)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nvlpubs.nist.gov)
        
       | acidburnNSA wrote:
       | I'm glad they explain how to write names on the card for even
       | very long names, like: "Dingo Pontooroomooloo Vaasa Silvaan
       | Beenelong Wooloomooloo Warrandyte Warwarnambool"
        
         | deepsun wrote:
         | How?
        
           | bee_rider wrote:
           | Table 4-1 on page 44, I think.
        
         | mschuster91 wrote:
         | To send you down a bit of a rabbit hole: ICAOs standard 9303
         | [1] on how to _abbreviate_ long names for use on the MRZ of
         | international travel documents uses the exact same examples.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p4_cons_en....
         | (page 30)
        
           | omoikane wrote:
           | I wonder how they came up with this. I thought it was unique
           | to FIPS 201 but looks like ICAO has it too. Is there like a
           | lorem ipsum generator but for text that looks like names?
        
         | doctor_eval wrote:
         | That is weird. Dingo is an Australian native dog. Wooloomooloo
         | and Bennelong (slight spelling difference) are in Sydney,
         | Australia. Warrandyte is an outer suburb north of Melbourne.
         | Warnambool (not Warwarnambool) is a town to the west of
         | Melbourne. I've been to all of them.
         | 
         | Why so much Australian in this example?!
        
       | rkeene2 wrote:
       | PIV and CAC (DOD, but is now a PIV with CAC-NG) has been around
       | for a very long time. Passwords haven't been permitted in the US
       | Government since a short time after the signing of HSPD-12 in
       | 2004.
        
         | joesnark727 wrote:
         | Lol
        
           | joesnark727 wrote:
           | https://www.crn.com/news/security/2024/ivanti-discloses-
           | fift...
        
         | codeslave13 wrote:
         | Thats blatantly false. I just left an agency with passwords on
         | all thier unix boxed. With zero rotation policies. Its a
         | shitshow
        
           | Abekkus wrote:
           | You both can be right, US Gov will write well-intentioned
           | policy that none of their live teams can keep up with, even
           | after 20 years, _and_ I haven 't yet seen a practical
           | enterprise authentication architecture that doesn't fall back
           | on passwords somewhere.
        
             | rkeene2 wrote:
             | Within the DOD the most common solutions are SSH keys using
             | the CAC, Kerberos with PKINIT, or using some type of
             | intermediate systems to handle the auth like CA PAM.
             | 
             | There can still be a root password for emergencies, but it
             | wouldn't be available for remote access -- ILOM or some
             | other BMC (or even a serial port concentrator) would be
             | configured for HSPD-12-compliant auth for remote console
             | access, then you would use the root password for system
             | access (though you could also just reboot into a separate
             | operating system, since disk encryption isn't required
             | except for mobile devices).
             | 
             | I'm not sure what the above poster's command or
             | organization was doing to comply with HSPD-12, but they
             | were most likely doing something. The compliant reports are
             | generally public, also.
        
               | imwillofficial wrote:
               | Having long a storied history in DoD contracting, this is
               | not the case.
               | 
               | CAC login is for web only in most cases.
        
               | evanjrowley wrote:
               | PuTTY-CAC was an interesting, although imperfect solution
               | to using PIV/CAC cards together with SSH. I remember
               | piloting it from 2013-2014 at an agency. Back then, it
               | was maintained by Dan Risacher[0]. Nowadays it is
               | maintained on GitHub[1] and adopted some interesting
               | features like FIDO.
               | 
               | [0] https://risacher.org/putty-cac/
               | 
               | [1] https://github.com/NoMoreFood/putty-cac
        
               | rkeene2 wrote:
               | I started out as a federal civil servant in the late 90s
               | working for the Navy and switched to contracting shortly
               | thereafter, working at mostly US DOD customers (Navy,
               | Army, USSOCOMHQ), but also DHS (HQ and all components
               | minus SS and CG).
               | 
               | In my experience, at every place we had a different
               | approach but all satisfied HSPD-12 and did not use
               | passwords shortly after the various directives were
               | promulgated through the various channels, except on
               | classified systems since there wasn't a procedure at the
               | time to declassify the CAC/PIV after periods processing
               | -- though there were plans for changing that, and it may
               | be resolved by now.
        
               | imwillofficial wrote:
               | I won't go into detail, but my experience was not the
               | same, not even close.
        
               | ptcrash wrote:
               | Yes but PIV/CAC identity is not related to break-glass
               | passwords. They both serve different purposes and it's
               | safe to assume that the typical government worker will
               | only ever need to use their smart card to authenticate
               | into systems.
        
           | jhbadger wrote:
           | But could you get into the network to access the UNIX boxes
           | without a PIV card? That's how the NIH works -- the UNIX
           | boxes do have passwords, but unless you are on campus you
           | have to connect to the VPN with your PIV card first.
        
             | rsfern wrote:
             | NIST has a similar setup. There's an exemption for e.g.
             | summer students who are issued temporary non-PIV badges,
             | but they're issued a yubikey that's required to access the
             | network from off campus
        
               | p_l wrote:
               | Recentish Yubikeys have PIV functionality too (I have
               | used that to login to work macbook in place of passwords)
        
           | pigbearpig wrote:
           | Maybe, just maybe it's possible the US Government is an
           | enormous entity and there could be some inconsistencies.
        
         | torstenvl wrote:
         | It depends. There are IL2-exposed sites that permit password
         | login, and interface with IL4 backends (milConnect and DEERS,
         | MOL and MCTFS, etc.). I'm not sure what the ATO process looks
         | like for those systems though. But you're not getting direct
         | IL4+ access without a CAC somewhere.
        
         | jki275 wrote:
         | LOL.
         | 
         | Nice theory, but has no actual connection to the real world.
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | (2022)
        
       | wolverine876 wrote:
       | (PDF)
        
       | sparcpile wrote:
       | I use a PIV Badge as a FAA contractor. We're told to never use
       | the PIV badge as a means of identification anywhere. The
       | documentation doubles down by mentioning to never use it as an ID
       | at an airport. I've been told it is because FAA employees would
       | use it and the airline workers would then freak out that the
       | employee was there to inspect them.
        
         | plasma_beam wrote:
         | I'm a contractor for DHS and heard a rumor a long time ago that
         | you could get special treatment with TSA agents when using your
         | DHS badge as identification. Yeah no. Doesn't work :) Southwest
         | did give me a free drink one time though and thanked me for my
         | service - they saw the laptop and piv plugged in while I was
         | working on the plane and thought I was military. I did correct
         | them but also took the free drink.
        
         | saghm wrote:
         | > We're told to never use the PIV badge as a means of
         | identification anywhere
         | 
         | I must be misunderstanding what you mean by this, because I'm
         | struggling to fathom what possible use a "personal identity
         | verification badge" could possibly have _other_ than as a means
         | of identifying yourself.
        
         | aimonster2 wrote:
         | You don't use your PIV anywhere because you don't want your
         | creds--certs, etc--to be swiped. You use it for facility access
         | and PKI.
        
       | hendler wrote:
       | Not sure why this was posted and made it to the front page but
       | identity is certainly critical infrastructure with further
       | challenges coming soon.
       | 
       | Surprised no one has mentioned the open sourcing of the Orb in
       | this context https://worldcoin.org/blog/engineering/worldcoin-
       | foundation-...
        
       | deathanatos wrote:
       | I had to get one of these recently. (And thankfully, I am done
       | with the government for a while.) If you want a process that will
       | make you believe "wow, we have too much bureaucracy in this
       | country", then get a PIV card. By the end, I thought I was
       | definitely just being strung along in some sort of eternal joke,
       | and had started joking that the reward for completing forms was
       | more forms.
       | 
       | So many forms. Randomly imposed, arbitrary deadlines that were
       | utterly impossible. (And ... not really deadlines, since you can
       | just email and say a polite "how about no" & magic extensions
       | happen.) Forms that were submitted by encrypting them into a zip,
       | and then sending zip+password in an email...?
       | 
       | The person who fingerprinted me was royally annoyed at me for
       | showing up with all the materials their office had told me to
       | show up with, but _not_ having the materials that I wasn 't told
       | to show up with. (And that I wasn't "in the system" -- okay. I'm
       | new! I don't know why that is, nor who to ask, nor what 98% of
       | the acronyms mean.)
       | 
       | You want to _stop_ being a contractor, and give the PIV card
       | back? More forms.
       | 
       | I started jokingly wondering when signatures in blood happen.
       | 
       | Definitely wasn't worth it, in my case.
        
         | Avamander wrote:
         | It's weird to read this coming from a country that basically
         | bundles PIV with your ID. Once every few years you take a new
         | picture and go grab it from a police station in half an hour
         | and that's basically it.
         | 
         | And at the same time support this widespread would not exist
         | without the U.S. using PIV, so I'm glad people bother :D I also
         | recall some U.S. government site recommending a small and sleek
         | card reader designed here (folds into an USB-stick shape).
         | 
         | Hopefully these processes improve and systems become more
         | interoperable cross-borders at some point.
        
         | 2devnull wrote:
         | "Forms that were submitted by encrypting them into a zip, and
         | then sending zip+password in an email...?"
         | 
         | I suspect that's not too uncommon.
        
       | GauntletWizard wrote:
       | I'm working on a personal project using PKCS11 stuff. I'm glad
       | for the commonality of PIV cards - It's a terrible standard but
       | it's intercompatible enough that it's made HSMs suitable for SMB
       | very cheap.
        
         | rkeene2 wrote:
         | I do a lot of PKCS11 stuff, let me know if there's something I
         | can help with.
        
         | EvanAnderson wrote:
         | PIV cards in Windows work shockingly well out of the box. I
         | bought some Taglio-branded PIV cards to play with and have
         | certificate-based logon to my webserver going in just a couple
         | of hours. Logon to Windows itself took more work but wasn't too
         | difficult.
        
       | 1attice wrote:
       | Does literally no one in the US federal government use online
       | dating/hookup services? _how_ is this called PIV. Like, the
       | giggling alone would disqualify me from most jobs
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-24 23:02 UTC)