On 3/27/06, Michael J Freedman <mfreed@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
... This approach is certainly commonly done by people for useability. However, the problem is that the best security you get is that of security provided by the weakest site (i.e., the weakest link the chain analogy).
true; which is why i'd like to see them use a single good password to mount an encrypted volume and secure OS where the rest of the (different*) passwords and PIN's and whatever else are kept.
As a solution developed precisely for this problem, you should check out the pwdhash extension for browsers:
this is a handy utility! i'd still be concerned about dictionary attacks on poor passwords (that is, discovering '.848fe29s44j' is the hash for pwned.com and 'secret'.) secure digests make this more expensive but not by much. * are you aware of any utility for the browser that generates random passwords? i'd like something like this as well, with the idea that the first time you visit the site (or need to change a password) a random password is generated, placed in the input text field, and then the browser password manager remembers it after that point. (and the password db is stored on an encrypted file system to prevent theft). someone will ask about users who aren't on their machine and need to access a site. i don't like to support this ability because you should never be using an untrusted computer to access a secure site. if the computer is trusted you should also be able to boot from CD and insert your USB storage key (which lets you use your browser password manager). (actually, looking at the source for PwdHash it appears easy enough to modify for random password generation) thanks for the tip,