this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
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549
NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
179 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Here is the text of the NIST sp800-63b Digital Identity Guidelines.

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[–] [email protected] 336 points 1 month ago (76 children)

Reworded rules for clarity:

  1. Min required length must be 8 chars (obligatory), but it should be 15 chars (recommended).
  2. Max length should allow at least 64 chars.
  3. You should accept all ASCII plus space.
  4. You should accept Unicode; if doing so, you must count each code as one char.
  5. Don't demand composition rules (e.g. "u're password requires a comma! lol lmao haha" tier idiocy)
  6. Don't bug users to change passwords periodically. Only do it if there's evidence of compromise.
  7. Don't store password hints that others can guess.
  8. Don't prompt the user to use knowledge-based authentication.
  9. Don't truncate passwords for verification.

I was expecting idiotic rules screaming "bureaucratic muppets don't know what they're legislating on", but instead what I'm seeing is surprisingly sane and sensible.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

Don’t bug users to change passwords periodically. Only do it if there’s evidence of compromise.

This is a big one. Especially in corporate environments where most of the users are, shall we say, not tech savvy. Forcing people to comply with byzantine incomprehensible password composition rules plus incessantly insisting that they change their password every 7/14/30 days to a new inscrutable string that looks like somebody sneezed in punctuation marks accomplishes nothing other than enticing everyone to just write their password down on a Post-It and stick it to their monitor or under their keyboard.

Remember: Users do not care about passwords. From the perspective of anyone who isn't a programmer or a security expert, passwords are just yet another exasperating roadblock some nerd keeps putting in front of them that is preventing them from doing whatever it is they were actually trying to do.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Everyone I've spoken to who has a password change rule just changes one character from their previous password. It does NOTHING.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

"I just increment the number at the end" is a phrase I've heard so many times

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