#27467: Documentation inaccurate for password validator
UserAttributeSimilarityValidator
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               Reporter:             |          Owner:  nobody
  goblinJoel                         |
                   Type:             |         Status:  new
  Uncategorized                      |
              Component:             |        Version:  1.9
  Documentation                      |       Keywords:  password management
               Severity:  Normal     |  validation validator
           Triage Stage:             |      Has patch:  0
  Unreviewed                         |
    Needs documentation:  0          |    Needs tests:  0
Patch needs improvement:  0          |  Easy pickings:  1
                  UI/UX:  0          |
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 While this has to do with configuring password validation, it doesn't
 strike me as a security vulnerability per se, so I'm posting in the
 standard bug tracker:

 The documentation for UserAttributeSimilarityValidator states,
   "The maximum similarity the password can have, before it is rejected,
 can be set with the max_similarity parameter, on a scale of 0 to 1. A
 setting of 0 will cause all passwords to be rejected, '''whereas a setting
 of 1 will cause it to only reject passwords that are identical to an
 attribute’s value.'''"

 However, if you set it to 1, it will never reject a password, even when
 identical to a user attribute (for example, email). The code checks
 whether the similarity is '''>''' the max_similarity, rather than '''>='''
 as the documentation describes. The documentation should be updated to
 reflect this.

 I found this on Django 1.9.11 while testing that I'd installed password
 validators correctly: when I tried to change a test user's password (via
 the admin) to the same as their email, it allowed it. If I changed
 max_similarity to 1.0 instead of 1, I got the same behavior. If I changed
 it to 0.9, it rejected the email as password, as it should.

 The documentation for the version I'm using:
 
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/topics/auth/passwords/#django.contrib.auth.password_validation.UserAttributeSimilarityValidator

 The source code for the validator:
 
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/_modules/django/contrib/auth/password_validation/#UserAttributeSimilarityValidator

 I checked the docs and source code for 1.10 and dev, and they appear to
 have the same issue. I haven't submitted a bug here before, so I hope I've
 done everything correctly!

--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/27467>
Django <https://code.djangoproject.com/>
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