> I'm quite surprised by this as issuing password reset e-mails is by
> far the most common method, I'm thinking of Google, Yahoo!, Amazon
> etc. It's also worrying that asking users to click on a link in an e-
> mail is a cognitive burden! But I do understand that anything that
> reduces support requests is A Good Thing. :)

Resets are the most common method only among sites whose data is
critically important (email applications, financial institutions,
places that have your credit card info, etc.)  I believe that password
reminders are more common on the wider Web.  They are certainly more
convenient.

> Just to check whether I'm familiar with how it works and check my
> reasoning for saying immediately available. Would these steps be a
> decent approximation of the actions required?
> 1. Read-only access gained to application directory, perhaps on shared
> host and accidentally left world-readable.
> 2. Copy the RSA keys (I forget under where they are stored)
> 3. Read database.yml and use credentials to login to DB and make copy
> of users table.
> 4. Run each row through Ruby's OpenSSL decryption function.
> 5. Profit?! :P

I think those steps are basically right.  It appears that we differ in
our use of the word "immediately".  :-)

> My point is that if the server is breached and you're using a salted
> hash your user passwords are still really very safe, no panic. If it
> was breached with the encryption system the passwords are as good as
> plaintext, given the above steps are accurate.

That's right, except my mother can read plaintext, but she would never
be able to figure out those steps.  Low barrier !=

>
>> As always, we are open to suggestions.  Switching to salted hashes
>> would make migrating existing installations annoying, but the
>> implementation itself would be easy.
>
> I think if it was switched the upgrade would be relatively painless as
> you could decrypt and hash all the passwords automatically in a DB
> migration. Anyway, I'm not going to try to persuade you to switch,
> just want to make sure that people who use Insoshi are aware of the
> security implications.
>
> I'm also interested in hearing what others think so please speak up!
>
> Best regards,
> Andrew
> >
>



-- 
Michael Hartl
Insoshi social software
http://insoshi.com/

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