Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Masked Passwords Should Stay... Probably

The WebAppSec world has been awash with conflict following Bruce Schneier's discussion/comments that the masking of password entries on computers (and smartphones) should be done away with.

The discussion itself has morphed to some degree (well, quite a bit really), but essentially the argument is that the masking of passwords as they're entered in to a computer as part of an authentication sequence shouldn't be masked because of usability issues.

Now first off, I'm not a great fan of masked password entry myself, and I'm guaranteed to screw up a password several times each day, but I still think its a useful and relevant security technology. True, it's not much better than the password it's trying to protect - and it offers as much protection as the padding on a cars steering wheel does in a head-on collision - but it serves a purpose.

But I also split my answer. I think that password masking is less relevant to smartphones and could more easily be done away with. At least with a smartphone you can pull it close to your chest and obscure the password you're typing - it's damned near impossible to do the same with the LCD screen on your desk without looking like you're trying to theive it.

As with any security technology, theres a time and a place. Masked password use belongs as part of desktop protection of Web applications - but less so for smartphones (and fat fingers).

6 comments:

  1. First day at my new work, the administrator come to do *something* on my computer. He give me back the computer, but he left his secret password masked in a window previously opened to access a shared folder.

    :>

    I think that if the password was not masked, he didn't do this error.

    Perhaps a solution is just to add a button to mask the password if someone other is watching your screen. But the real solution is multi-factor authentication.

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  2. I agree about the smartphones. When you type the password the character shows up at least momentarily anyways (at least on the one's I've used).

    I agree about Multi-Factor Authentication as well, Dnucna.

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  3. Sorry, last post was me, didn't mean to use the company name...

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  4. One of the few nice features of using lotus notes is that while it masks the password it provides a changing picture with each character placed in the password box. If you fat finger a password your habitual picture is not present so you know that you didn´t put the right one in.

    This is a workable compromise.

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  5. I bet you IBM probably owns a patent for that picture aspect!

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  6. Another version of live visualization of password input fields.

    http://mattt.github.com/Chroma-Hash/

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