Tagged Questions

-2
votes
1answer
378 views

Changing user account passwords from PHP script - vulnerabilities? [closed]

I started a thread a while back asking for suggestions on a good (good=fairly secure) way to allow users to change their account passwords via a PHP script. (WHY? because on this particular server, I ...
1
vote
1answer
128 views

Is there formal guidance that requires all sessions to be logged off when a user changes their password?

Often when an account is hacked, security guidance is to change your password. However I've noticed that changing a password sometimes isn't enough to log out of other sessions that are active. Is ...
5
votes
3answers
328 views

How does KeePass master key derivation increase security?

I don't understand how KeePass key derivation increases the security of the password db at all. First I'll try to explain what I understood from the key derivation described here. I'll use some pseudo ...
15
votes
2answers
2k views

Standards for encrypting passwords in configuration files?

My workplace has a standard that plaintext passwords are not allowed in application configuration files. This makes enough sense on its face, in case someone gets access to the config files they ...
6
votes
5answers
2k views

Email forgotten password or send reset link, both just as insecure?

I originally posted this as a reply here in this thread but didn't get much feedback on it, and now I'm curious as to what others think is the best approach, or if there is any difference between the ...
7
votes
2answers
312 views

Should user be allowed to save password in browser?

The auditing company found a bug "The Auto-complete form attribute is set in password field". They suggested to disable autocomplete for this field to prevent disclosure of it "when working on shared ...
15
votes
3answers
2k views

Should I have a maximum password length?

I'm creating a webapp, and part of my authentication method is password length. Should I put one in place? (say, 50 characters?) Or should I just put a minimum length (Currently at 6). Are there ...
7
votes
8answers
569 views

Is the following authentication scheme secure?

I was trying to design an authentication system that would make it much harder to guess a password via brute force, and reduce the risk to a user if the hashed password was stolen through a snooping ...
4
votes
3answers
3k views

What password-based encryption to use with standard Java 6?

Which password-based encryption method should I use in Java 6? It should be as strong as possible, but work with the default security policy file (not the export restricted one which you have to ...
4
votes
2answers
5k views

Where/How is an ODBC password stored when 'saved' in Access?

I have been working on a program that uses MS Access and ODBC to connect to an SQL server. One of the requirements is that the user need not know the password for the connection to the SQL server, so ...
7
votes
4answers
551 views

How to protect ftp account information in the source code of a program

I wrote a game which stores high score information on an ftp server. In the the source code I need to write out the ftp link with the account name and password in it. For example: url = new ...
14
votes
4answers
746 views

What to transfer? Password or its hash?

Let's say in my database I store passwords hashed with salt with a fairly expensive hash (scrypt, 1000 rounds of SHA2, whatever). Upon login, what should I transfer over the network and why? Password ...
12
votes
6answers
525 views

Is This Login Security Enough?

I'm coming up with my next login system for admins of an ecommerce website to have login form is SSL secured password is converted to sha256 before being transmitted (bcrypt is too slow still for ...
6
votes
4answers
2k views

How to implement a “Remember me” on a mobile app?

I would like to implement a "Remember Me" time-limited auto-login type feature on a mobile application (on Android). To start the app, the user must type in a username and password. For convenience, ...
13
votes
3answers
1k views

Should security question answers be case-sensitive?

Question In the case of security questions being used to reset an account password, what is considered best practice for handling case-sensitivity on the security question answers? Scenario An ...
35
votes
4answers
4k views

Recommended # of iterations when using PKBDF2-SHA256?

I'm curious if anyone has any advice or points of reference when it comes to determining how many iterations is 'good enough' when using PBKDF2 (specifically with SHA-256). Certainly, 'good enough' is ...
3
votes
2answers
468 views

BlackBerry client authenticating to Java Web Service

I already asked this question at StackOverflow here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4970681/blackberry-app-security and was directed to this site, can anyone pitch in as to how I can solve this ...
3
votes
1answer
848 views

Does the Ophcrack LiveCD require hash collection via programs like pwdump?

When I used the Ophcrack LiveCD recently, the program automatically ran without me manually loading any hashes. Question is: If Ophcrack does not automatically find hashes, how can I go about ...
4
votes
2answers
394 views

Storing third-party auth info securely

Suppose there's a multi-user web application that requires access to user's mailbox (on third-party service, like gmail, etc.). This access needs to be persistent. Which means we'd have to store user ...
114
votes
11answers
14k views

How to securely hash passwords?

If I hash passwords before storing them in my database, is that sufficient to prevent them being recovered by anyone? I should point out that this relates only to retrieval directly from the ...