Larion Studios forum stores your passwords in unhashed plaintext. Don’t use a password there that you’ve used anywhere else.
Hello, c/Games mod here.
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For everyone infosec culture, hashing and salting password consist in using one-way mathematical functions to encrypt passwords. It is a very commonly used security practice to make it more difficult for an attacker that was able to steal a database to obtain the password. As the website is unable to decrypt said password (thank to the one way mathematical function), the only way to send you back your password in this manner is to have it unhashed and unsalted in his database.
But
In the current case, this is a registration email, which may have been sent before the initial hashing and salting. In this case we cannot say for sure if Larion Studios indeed have unhashed and unsalted password in his database.
That’s very unlikely. It’s running UBB Threads, which, from what I can tell, has an auth subsystem, which au minimum would do hashing. If it’s providing you with a default at sign-up, that’s different and is what appears to be a configurable setting.
If it is completely generated for you, here’s what probably happening:
- User creation module runs a password generator and stores this and the username in memory as string variables.
- User creation module calls back to storage module to store new user data in db, including the value of the generated password var.
- Either the storage module or another middleware module hashes the password while preparing to store.
- Storage module reports success to user creation.
- User creation module prints the vars to the welcome template and unloads them from memory.
TL;DR as this is running on a long-established commercial php forum package, with DB storage, it is incredibly unlikely that the password is stored in the DB as plaintext. At most it is likely stored in memory during creation. I cannot confirm, however, as it is not FOSS.
It sends the user generated password, not an auto generated one.
Yeah if they send the password in an email in plain text that’s not storing it. You can send the email before you store the password while it’s still in memory and then hash it and store it.
Stored in memory is still stored. It’s still unencrypted during data processing. Still bad practice and a security vulnerability at best. Email isn’t E2E encrypted.
there is no possible way to handle sensitive data without storing it in memory at some point
it’s where you do all the salting, hashing, and encrypting
emailing out credentials like this after sign up is certainly not best practice, but probably not a huge deal for a video game forum of all things. if you are re-using passwords then you already have a way bigger problem.
emailing out credentials like this after sign up is certainly not best practice,
Understatement of the year right here. Everyone in this thread is more interested in dunking on OP for the few wrong statements they make rather than focusing on the fact that a service is emailing their users their password (not an autogenerated “first time” one) in plaintext in an email.
there is no possible way to handle sensitive data without storing it in memory at some point
Since we’re nitpicking here - technically you can. They could run hashing client side first, and instead of sending the password in plain-text, you’d send a hashed version
but then you expose your salt to the public
No, the client side hashing doesn’t substitutes anything server side, it just adds an extra step in the client
This opens up the possibility of replay attacks in the case of data breaches, though, and those are much more common than http mitm attacks (made even less likely with the proliferation of https).
I’m not entirely sure whether hashing twice (local and server) is wise, having not thought through that entire threat vector. Generally I try to offload auth as much as I can to some sort of oauth provider, and hopefully they’ll all switch over to webauthn soon anyway.
I’m not really sure how it opens up replay attacks, since it doesn’t really change anything to the default auth. There are already sites that do this.
The only difference is that instead of sending an http request of
{ username = "MyUsername", Password = "MyPassword" }changes to{ username = "MyUsername", Password = HashOf("MyPassword") }- and the HashOf(“MyPassword”) effectively becomes your password. - So I don’t know how that opens up a possibility for replay attack. There’s not really any difference between replaying a ClearText auth request vs an pre-hashed auth request. - Because everything else server side stays the same(Not entirely auth related), but another approach of client side decryption is to handle decryption completely client site - meaning all your data is stored encrypted on the server, and the server sends you an encrypted container with your data that you decrypt client side. That’s how Proton(Mail) works in a nutshell
Stored in memory is still stored.
Given what I know about how computers accept user input, I am fascinated to hear what the alternative is.
You have the text input feed directly into the encryption layer without an intermediary variable. The plaintext data should never be passable to an accessible variable which it must be to send the plaintext password in the email because it’s not an asynchronous process.
I’m surprised so many people are getting hung up on basic infosec.
Are you suggesting to do all this on the frontend before it goes to the backend?
If they can send you, your own password in plain text. That’s already bad enough. Just not good practise.
The front end to backend traffic should be encrypted, hashing occurs on the backend. The backend should never have access to a variable with a plaintext password.
I’m going to have to stop replying because I don’t have the time to run every individual through infosec 101.
While sending your password in plaintext over email is very much a bad idea and a very bad practice, it doesn’t mean they store your password in their database as plaintext.
Encrypted passwords are still an unacceptable way to store passwords. They should be hashed.
(and salted before hashing.)
And marinated in butter milk.
Peppered if you’re feeling extra
Just because they send out the password does not mean it’s not hashed. They could send the email before hashing.
You’re correct and after reading more of the thread I saw OP say this was sent immediately after registering. I don’t have reason to believe it is stirred in plaintext unless they’re storing s copy of every email they send.
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Would you accept “in a way that can be reversed”?
It’s possible that this email is a result of forum user creation, so during that submission the plaintext password was available to send to the user. Then it would be hashed and stored.
I don’t know why you’d give them any benefit of the doubt. They should have already killed that with this terrible security practice.
But yeah, sure, maybe this one giant, extremely visible lapse in security is the only one they have.
I’m just explaining how user authentication works for most web applications. The server will process your plaintext password when your account is created. It should then store that as a hashed string, but it can ALSO send out an email with that plaintext password to the user describing their account creation. This post does not identify that passwords are stored in plaintext, it just identifies that they email plaintext passwords which is poor security practice.
This particular poor security practice is very much like a roach. If you see one you have a bigger problem.
See, I can also repeat myself as though you didn’t understand the first time.
Passwords shouldn’t be stored at all though 🤷♂️
You mean plaintext passwords right? Ofcourse then need to store your (hashed)password!
The hash is not the password.
My bad! I just misunderstood >.<
If they stored the hashed password this thread wouldn’t exist.
Point is, a hash isn’t a password. giving the most you don’t need tech knowledge analogy, it’s like the passwords fingerprint.
The police station may keep your daughters fingerprint so that if they find a lost child they can recognize it is your daughter beyond any doubt. Your daughters fingerprints, is like a hash, your daughter is a password.
The police should not store your daughter… that’s bad practice. The fingerprints are all they should store, and needless to say the fingerprints aren’t your daughter, just as a hash isn’t a password.
no, they probably dont.
they just send it to your email upon registration, which is kinda a bad idea, but they are probably storing passwords hashed afterwards.this is still a terrible idea. the system should never know the plaintext password.
logs capture a lot even automated emails. i don’t see a single reason to send the user their plaintext password and many reasons why they shouldn’t
passwords are usually hashed server-side tho and that’s done for a reason.
if handling passwords correctly, server side hashing is way more secure then client-side. (with client side hashing, hash becomes the password…)
“Kinda a bad idea?” This is fucking insane.
Is it though? While it certainly isn’t something I’d recommend, and I’ve encountered it before, if E2E encryption exists we cannot assume a data exposure had occurred.
What they do on the backend has nothing to do with this notification system. Think of it as one of these credentialess authentication systems that send a ‘magic link’ to your inbox.
…and if they keep the emails they send out archived (which would be reasonable), they also have it stored in plaintext there.
Don’t use a password
therethat you’ve used anywhere elseJust get a password manager already
BitWarden is awesome. Been using it since 2 of my colleagues went to work for them
How is this better than Firefox built-in password manager?
Firefox is extremely easy to get your password from behind the *** if it autofills. Requires physical access, but literally takes seconds. Right click the field, inspect and change the field type from password to text.
So if my passwords are behind fingerprint there’s no problem?
On mobile I’m assuming. I personally don’t know a way to bypass the fingerprint locks. And if you’re also having Firefox create random difficult passwords, its significantly better than reusing the same one. So you’re probably a much harder target than the majority of people. I’d have to double check but I think even on desktop if you have a master password for Firefox and don’t just have logins auto filled you’re probably good there too.
Thank you. I do use master password on everything. This does ease my mind a bit.
This is the correct answer.
Sending your password right after you created it might not be best practice, but it doesn’t mean it’s stored unhashed in the database. It looks like they’re using a third party forum software, so it should be pretty straightforward to figure out whether they do or not.
Looks like they address it here: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=669268#Post669268
That doesn’t really mean that they store it in plain text. They sent it to you after you finished creating your account, and it’s likely that the password was just in plain text during the registration. The question still remains whether they store their outgoing emails (in which case yes, your password would still be stored in plain text on their end, not in the database though).
Your guess is confirmed here.
There are plans to update the forum, including for better security (the main issue with changing the forum software is concern over reliably migrating all of the existing content). After emailing (admittedly not current best practice), the passwords are hashed and only the hash is stored.
…and later…
The forum has been updated to https, and passwords are no longer being sent by email.
Which raises the question of how old OP’s screen shot is.
Also, no, the password would not necessarily still be stored in plain text on their end. The cleartext password used in that email might be only in memory, and discarded after sending the message. Depends on how the UBB forum software implemented it and how Larian’s mail servers are set up.
EDIT: I just verified that this behavior has resurfaced since it was originally fixed. OP would do well to responsibly report it, rather than stirring up drama over a web forum account.
It is still a bad idea to send the password in plaintext via email. You never know when Bard will peek a look and then share your password along users as a demo account to try that forum.
There’s a lot of reasons why emailing passwords is not the best practice… But AI bots stealing your password to give people free demos is a wild paranoid fever dream.
EDIT: Apparently, I replied to a joke.
It is meant to be as a joke, of course the AI is not that dumb enough to give it away as free demo. Why am I being downvoted? Why don’t people understand jokes these days? Do I always have to include /s when making a sarcastic joke even though it is so obvious?
I’ve seen people argue stupider things earnestly.
It’s 2023, I really hope people are not using the same password in multiple places. Password managers solved this problem a decade ago. Use one, with multi factor auth on important sites like email.
There are people who purposely forget their passwords, so they use the “forgot my password” link every time they need to login.
Hard to hack them.
That’s just 2FA with extra steps
Yeah some sites also dont have passwords, they just send a login link to your email every time.
I prefer passwords so I don’t have to go to my email to log in, but I understand it’s easier for some people to do it that way. Your email address becomes your identity then.
Oh, they are. I keep telling people to WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORDS, and NEVER use same password on two sites. They dont listen. Its a lot easier to just remember 1-4 variations of a password and use that than carry around a password notebook. And they think themselves safe.
I’m thinking most people shouldnt use passwords at all anymore. They are a huge point of failure because people are people. We need something else to be the norm. How can we make hardware keys or something the norm for logging in? Have everyone carry around a bankcard-like thing that fit into every computer where people need credentials. Would’nt that be safer while still being accessible and convenient?
There are yubikeys you can use to login, but it requires installing stuff on each computer you want to access. Nothing is simpler then passwords. :)
I used a yubikey for a while, they are alright, but I could only use it for logging on to a computer, not for logging into specific sites. Even though I guess that could be solved with a password manager integration.
Nothing is simpler than passwords. But we want something thats both simple and safe. Even for lazy people, tech-unsawy people, and people with bad memory.
What if every pc came with a jubikey-ish reader and every website supported a browser api for it? Probably not jubikey, but something that fit in a wallet like bank cards do (but also was an open tech so that anyone can implement and sell cards). Wouldn’t it be both safer and simpler than passwords? It would take some time to turn around of course but the same was probably the case for https, 2fa, ipv6, and tpm’s.
Those are called smart cards. Traditional smart cards needed centralized management of credentials, but FIDO2 smart cards exist that work like the keys. The reason tokens are more typically USB-based (or NFC) is every PC has USB, but most don’t have smart card readers.
FIDO2 can be used for passwordless log in on a few sites, but the site and browser need to support the feature (no extra installation). It sets a pin on the yubikey and when entered the key does all the authentication. It will likely be seen more as Apple “passkeys” gain more popularity, Windows and Android already have native support but don’t market as hard.
suggest something like this
use your favorite password but add the site to it
so your lemmy password would be ilovemypasswordLEMMY
and your reddit password would be ilovemypasswordREDDIT
that way they can keep their shitty password but it won’t be the same password on every site and they have an easy way to remember what the proper password is for the site they want to accesss
That’s horrible if you ever become the victim of a targeted attack. Compromise your password once on some random shitty site and they’ve got access to everything.
It’s also quite likely that incidents involving password dumps will have crackers filtering the dumped data looking for exactly passwords like this.
This will create individual passwords which is better than the same password everywhere. If it’s the least they will do, it’s better than not.
I used to do this, but I realized that if someone got access to any of my passwords, they would easily spot the pattern.
In the end, using a password manager and generating large random passwords for each site was the best solution I found.
Still better than using the same password. My argument is if you can only convince them to do at least that, it’s better than every site using the same password
I’ve used the same password for everything since 1991. If anyone’s cracked it, they haven’t attempted to get into my shit. Probably because there’s nothing worthwhile to steal.
Bro that’s dumb as hell
Since 1992 I just use his creds and sign up for a bunch of shit
If you dont care, just give me your password then. :)
It’s *********.
Edit: I guess the site autohides passwords? 🤷🏻♂️
hunter2
Hey, you’re right!
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what a stupid comment
Show me where the proof is that they STORE it plain text. This is just a screen of a mail after creating an account.
