[jboss-as7-dev] Relaxing password requirements for add-user script?

[Anil Saldhana]

Darran,
   I have been thinking about the properties file strategy.  I support 
your thinking. But I want to put forward some thoughts:

 From the LinkedIn password fiasco, the general industry philosophy is 
that passwords that are just hashed are prone to dictionary/brute force 
attacks, irrespective of how strong the password is. There is a 
necessity to introduce a salt per password.
Introduction of a salt per password is just going to make the usability 
aspects challenging with the properties file strategy.

We should consider the PicketLink IDM work for storing passwords. The 
password management becomes a responsibility of the IDM framework. 
Discussion on this framework is happening in the security-dev mailing list.

Regards,
Anil

On 10/11/2012 09:09 AM, Andrig Miller wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Darran Lofthouse" <darran.lofthouse at jboss.com>
>> To: "Andrig Miller" <anmiller at redhat.com>
>> Cc: "Jason Greene" <jason.greene at redhat.com>, jboss-as7-dev at lists.jboss.org
>> Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 3:01:57 AM
>> Subject: Re: [jboss-as7-dev] Relaxing password requirements for	add-user	script?
>>
>> Hi Andy,
>>
>> It may be missing at the moment but this complexity check was
>> supposed
>> to have a modifiable policy file that the administrator could update
>> to
>> specify the rules they really want.  How would any auditors consider
>> that?
>>
> That, in my opinion, would be fine.  The only issue would be how you protect that policy file from be tampered with, but this is true of all configuration.
>
>> To me the modifying of a policy to weaken it is a deliberate act by
>> an
>> administrator, that same administrator also has the capability to
>> reconfigure the server to use BASIC authentication or store the
>> passwords in plain text instead of pre-hashed.
>>
>> However the --force option does feel too easy for someone to use and
>> then forget they forced through a weak password just to get their
>> production server online.
>>
> Agreed.
>
> Andy
>
>> Regards,
>> Darran Lofthouse.
>>
>>
>> On 10/10/2012 08:29 PM, Andrig Miller wrote:
>>> Not to my knowledge.  My point, is whenever you give have these
>>> allowances, you make the customer have to prove to the auditors
>>> that you are not using them.
>>>
>>> Auditors love these kinds of things, because it gives them
>>> something to poke into.  More billable hours ;-)
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Jason Greene" <jason.greene at redhat.com>
>>>> To: "Brian Stansberry" <brian.stansberry at redhat.com>
>>>> Cc: jboss-as7-dev at lists.jboss.org
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 1:22:32 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [jboss-as7-dev] Relaxing password requirements for
>>>> 	add-user	script?
>>>>
>>>> As someone mentioned earlier RHEL lets you set a bad password (if
>>>> you
>>>> agree to it). Is there a special compliance distro of RHEL?
>>>> On Oct 10, 2012, at 12:45 PM, Brian Stansberry
>>>> <brian.stansberry at redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Interesting. This enforcing of password rules is new in AS
>>>>> master;
>>>>> AFAIK
>>>>> we've never had this kind of thing before.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 10/10/12 12:19 PM, Andrig Miller wrote:
>>>>>> We might run afoul of PCI and SOX requirements for customers
>>>>>> with
>>>>>> that kind of option.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Personally, I think just having some text that says the password
>>>>>> requirements when you create a user, to make it more usable is
>>>>>> what we should do, and not relax the requirements.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Andy
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>>>> From: "Jason Greene" <jason.greene at redhat.com>
>>>>>>> To: "Darran Lofthouse" <darran.lofthouse at jboss.com>
>>>>>>> Cc: jboss-as7-dev at lists.jboss.org
>>>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 7:46:54 AM
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [jboss-as7-dev] Relaxing password requirements for
>>>>>>> add-user	script?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Maybe we should allow a --force option, which bypasses that
>>>>>>> stuff?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Oct 10, 2012, at 4:49 AM, Darran Lofthouse
>>>>>>> <darran.lofthouse at jboss.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Agreed, a prompt would help so a feature request would be
>>>>>>>> welcome.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> This will be an interesting contributor task I think as we
>>>>>>>> would
>>>>>>>> need to
>>>>>>>> be mapping between the configured policy and appropriate log
>>>>>>>> messages.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>>>> Darran Lofthouse.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 10/10/2012 09:02 AM, Stuart Douglas wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Also, at the very least this should tell you the requirements
>>>>>>>>> before you
>>>>>>>>> have to go through the trial and error process to figure out
>>>>>>>>> what
>>>>>>>>> they are.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Stuart
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Jaikiran Pai wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> I think it's been a while since I used the add-user script
>>>>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>>>> add
>>>>>>>>>> application users. Turns out the password for the new user
>>>>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>>>> now
>>>>>>>>>> checked for strength and the rules are a bit annoying [1],
>>>>>>>>>> at
>>>>>>>>>> least for
>>>>>>>>>> me. As a developer, I just want to test a scenario for EJB
>>>>>>>>>> invocations.
>>>>>>>>>> I tried using "test" as a password and it failed with "too
>>>>>>>>>> few
>>>>>>>>>> characters". Then I tried "test12345" failed again with
>>>>>>>>>> "your
>>>>>>>>>> password
>>>>>>>>>> should have combination of upper case, lower case, ...". I
>>>>>>>>>> never
>>>>>>>>>> have
>>>>>>>>>> understood this specific requirement of passwords being
>>>>>>>>>> forced
>>>>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>>>> be of
>>>>>>>>>> certain type (many sites do it). So, would it be possible to
>>>>>>>>>> somehow
>>>>>>>>>> relax this requirement?
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I'm not a security expert, but is this "your password has to
>>>>>>>>>> have
>>>>>>>>>> upper
>>>>>>>>>> case, lower case, digit, special char" requirement really
>>>>>>>>>> worth
>>>>>>>>>> it in a
>>>>>>>>>> real application?
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> [1]
>>>>>>>>>> https://issues.jboss.org/browse/AS7-2756?focusedCommentId=12653165&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-12653165
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> -Jaikiran
>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Brian Stansberry
>>>>> Principal Software Engineer
>>>>> JBoss by Red Hat