7 ms·

How is that this esteemed organization of technical people doesn't know how to md5 passwords before storing them in the database?

gaius 14y ago
Because it's only a website, not REAL engineering! Let the intern do it!
valisystem 14y ago
Maybe they did that right after writing it clear text in http logs stored in publicly accessible files.
njr123 14y ago
From the article it doesn't sounds like it was anything to do with the db. Looks like they were processing the logins using GET instead of POST, unaware it was logging all the requests. Then the log files ended up on an ftp server for anyone to download.
fredley 14y ago
MD5 is not suitable either. The illusion of security is almost worse than no security.
stordoff 14y ago
md5 is not really much better than plain text (I imagine a few Amazon GPU instances could crack most of the md5 hashes very quickly). bcrypt is the way forward in most cases.
danielweber 14y ago
Because it's not that important. In most cases what someone could do with my account is to view articles I have paid for, either piecemeal or as a subscription. It's much more in their interest than my interest to keep that private. They've sent me my cleartext password several times before I finally wrote it down in a place I could keep it safe, and I was always thankful. Also, the default password is something very simple per account. I don't want to go into any more detail on that.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > Because it's not that important. yes, it very much is. > In most cases what someone could do with my account is to view articles I have paid for That's not the problem with leaking plaintext accounts. If the user database is compromised, you can safely assume all of the site is and the site's data is leaked as well (or would be if anyone gave a fuck). The problem of cleatext (or easy to reverse) password databases is twofold: 1. Most users reuse the same password again and again and again. Having their password leaked on site 1 means all of their accounts are now wide open to whoever got the passwords. 2. Even if only the passwords themselves are leaked, this provides a huge dataset of effective, real-world password. This is a treasure trove of human behaviors and enables the improvement of brute-forcing mutators. In fact, one of the most substantial and important events in modern hacking history was the RockYou password leak.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    You seem unfamiliar with the specific case. It wasn't the user database that was compromised. It was plainly obvious to any user of IEEE that they were storing your password in clear text. Because they would, y'know, mail it to you. And the mail would have live hyperlinks to access your account, which generally means GET requests.
    - masklinn 14y ago
      > You seem unfamiliar with the specific case. It wasn't the user database that was compromised. Which isn't really relevant. A password leak is a password leak, whatever its source is. > It was plainly obvious to any user of IEEE that they were storing your password in clear text And nobody every took issue with that? > And the mail would have live hyperlinks to access your account, which generally means GET requests. That doesn't mean anything, the hyperlink could have contained a nonce allowing log-in.
      - danielweber 14y ago
        Which isn't really relevant. Then please don't bring it up, i.e., say things like "if the user database is compromised, you can safely assume all of the site is". And nobody every took issue with that? Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. IEEE members are probably slightly more informed than your random AOL user. There are plenty of mail managers out there that mail you your password automatically every month.
masklinn 14y ago
> know how to md5 passwords MD5 is an utterly terrible password hash. It's just about as bad as plaintext. If you're hashing passwords with md5, please fix it and use one of scrypt, bcrypt or PBKDF2 (recommendations are generally in that order) with an acceptable load factor[0]. Go look up mozilla's coding security guide to know how to migrate from a terrible and insecure hash to a secure password hash. [0] the usual suggestion is that hashing a password should take a few hundred milliseconds on the production hardware, ideally at least half a second and really as much as your users will accept. For scrypt's memory load factor, it should take as much as you can spare.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  >It's just about as bad as plaintext. // Hyperbole is just about as bad as murder.
  - emidln 14y ago
    md5 passwords lists are plaintext for modern hardware. Well, not exactly plaintext, since you might end up needing to search a couple collisions that also work, but in terms of repurposing the information to attack another system, it's extremely close to plaintext.
  - masklinn 14y ago
    > Hyperbole is just about as bad as murder. It's not hyperbole, a rainbow table will give you instant plaintext for 95% of your passwords. And even if you don't want to use one, an off-the-shelf high-end graphic card (~$500) can compute 10 billion md5 hashes per second, plug that in a not-completely-retarded brute-forcer (jack the ripper, oclhashcat) and you've got pretty much the whole database as plaintext in hours tops. The only passwords you won't have plaintexted are those so complex you know the user doesn't reuse them anyway.
    - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
      Really? 155a7a01308fa0807f722c5984bd91fb --- I find "high-end graphic card (~$500) can compute 10 billion md5 hashes per second" a bit unbelievable [but that's progress for ya]. So that's roughly all possible alphanum characters of stringlen 6, each second. So if my calculation is correct (assuming 60 alphanum chars randomly chosen) that's only 7000 years to calculate all 12 char strings? Yes I realise that md5'ed password strings aren't random nor usually particularly long. Just saying.
jeremyt 14y ago
I have been a member of the IEEE, and a volunteer on one of their committees, as well as working in the association world in DC. The IEEE is an association, and doesn't actually have any engineers working for it. Likely, their website is outsourced to one of the local web development firms in town.

gaius 14y ago

Because it's only a website, not REAL engineering! Let the intern do it!

valisystem 14y ago

Maybe they did that right after writing it clear text in http logs stored in publicly accessible files.

njr123 14y ago

From the article it doesn't sounds like it was anything to do with the db. Looks like they were processing the logins using GET instead of POST, unaware it was logging all the requests. Then the log files ended up on an ftp server for anyone to download.

fredley 14y ago

MD5 is not suitable either. The illusion of security is almost worse than no security.

stordoff 14y ago

md5 is not really much better than plain text (I imagine a few Amazon GPU instances could crack most of the md5 hashes very quickly). bcrypt is the way forward in most cases.

danielweber 14y ago

Because it's not that important. In most cases what someone could do with my account is to view articles I have paid for, either piecemeal or as a subscription. It's much more in their interest than my interest to keep that private. They've sent me my cleartext password several times before I finally wrote it down in a place I could keep it safe, and I was always thankful. Also, the default password is something very simple per account. I don't want to go into any more detail on that.

masklinn 14y ago
> Because it's not that important. yes, it very much is. > In most cases what someone could do with my account is to view articles I have paid for That's not the problem with leaking plaintext accounts. If the user database is compromised, you can safely assume all of the site is and the site's data is leaked as well (or would be if anyone gave a fuck). The problem of cleatext (or easy to reverse) password databases is twofold: 1. Most users reuse the same password again and again and again. Having their password leaked on site 1 means all of their accounts are now wide open to whoever got the passwords. 2. Even if only the passwords themselves are leaked, this provides a huge dataset of effective, real-world password. This is a treasure trove of human behaviors and enables the improvement of brute-forcing mutators. In fact, one of the most substantial and important events in modern hacking history was the RockYou password leak.
- danielweber 14y ago
  You seem unfamiliar with the specific case. It wasn't the user database that was compromised. It was plainly obvious to any user of IEEE that they were storing your password in clear text. Because they would, y'know, mail it to you. And the mail would have live hyperlinks to access your account, which generally means GET requests.
  - masklinn 14y ago
    > You seem unfamiliar with the specific case. It wasn't the user database that was compromised. Which isn't really relevant. A password leak is a password leak, whatever its source is. > It was plainly obvious to any user of IEEE that they were storing your password in clear text And nobody every took issue with that? > And the mail would have live hyperlinks to access your account, which generally means GET requests. That doesn't mean anything, the hyperlink could have contained a nonce allowing log-in.
    - danielweber 14y ago
      Which isn't really relevant. Then please don't bring it up, i.e., say things like "if the user database is compromised, you can safely assume all of the site is". And nobody every took issue with that? Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. IEEE members are probably slightly more informed than your random AOL user. There are plenty of mail managers out there that mail you your password automatically every month.

masklinn 14y ago

> know how to md5 passwords MD5 is an utterly terrible password hash. It's just about as bad as plaintext. If you're hashing passwords with md5, please fix it and use one of scrypt, bcrypt or PBKDF2 (recommendations are generally in that order) with an acceptable load factor[0]. Go look up mozilla's coding security guide to know how to migrate from a terrible and insecure hash to a secure password hash. [0] the usual suggestion is that hashing a password should take a few hundred milliseconds on the production hardware, ideally at least half a second and really as much as your users will accept. For scrypt's memory load factor, it should take as much as you can spare.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago
>It's just about as bad as plaintext. // Hyperbole is just about as bad as murder.
- emidln 14y ago
  md5 passwords lists are plaintext for modern hardware. Well, not exactly plaintext, since you might end up needing to search a couple collisions that also work, but in terms of repurposing the information to attack another system, it's extremely close to plaintext.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > Hyperbole is just about as bad as murder. It's not hyperbole, a rainbow table will give you instant plaintext for 95% of your passwords. And even if you don't want to use one, an off-the-shelf high-end graphic card (~$500) can compute 10 billion md5 hashes per second, plug that in a not-completely-retarded brute-forcer (jack the ripper, oclhashcat) and you've got pretty much the whole database as plaintext in hours tops. The only passwords you won't have plaintexted are those so complex you know the user doesn't reuse them anyway.
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    Really? 155a7a01308fa0807f722c5984bd91fb --- I find "high-end graphic card (~$500) can compute 10 billion md5 hashes per second" a bit unbelievable [but that's progress for ya]. So that's roughly all possible alphanum characters of stringlen 6, each second. So if my calculation is correct (assuming 60 alphanum chars randomly chosen) that's only 7000 years to calculate all 12 char strings? Yes I realise that md5'ed password strings aren't random nor usually particularly long. Just saying.

jeremyt 14y ago

I have been a member of the IEEE, and a volunteer on one of their committees, as well as working in the association world in DC. The IEEE is an association, and doesn't actually have any engineers working for it. Likely, their website is outsourced to one of the local web development firms in town.