OP finds vulnerability where a forum sends you your password in plaintext over email and everyone misses the forest for the trees

Programming@programming.dev – 153 points – 9 months ago

This thread is frustrating. Everyone seems more interested in nitpicking the specifics of what OP is saying and are ignoring that a forum sends you your password (not an automatically generated one) in an email on registration.

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People weren't really nitpicking.

it's obviously bad to send an email with a plaintext password
the website owners had apparently already resolved the issue
it does not mean the passwords were stored in plaintext
the OP sounds like a skiddie in a bunch of comments and doesn't seem to understand how most websites with auth work

it does not mean the passwords were stored in plaintext

This is debatable. Yes, there is a chance the email is being generated and sent on the fly, before the password is stored. But in situations like this there is a much larger chance it’s being stored in plain text.

They have said it is being hashed for storage: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=669268#Post669268

I can’t fault the OP though, if I received such an email I would assume it is stored in plain text and be similarly upset.

Reversible hashed password storage isn't meaningfully better than clear text.

The key to reverse the hash is typically (necessarily) stored in the same infrastructure as the password. Bad actors with access to one have access to the combination.
Even if an attacker fails to exfiltrate the key to the reversible hash, it's typically only a matter of days at the most before they can reverse engineer it, and produce plain text copies of every password they obtained the hash of.

A reversible hash provides a paper thin layer of protection against accidental disclosure. A one way hash is widely considered the bare minimum for password storage.

Anyone claiming a password has been protected, and then being able to produce the original password, is justly subject to ridicule in security communities.

The one they were sending at registration was prior to hashing. It would not be reversible afterwards.

That's technically less terrible, then.

Good for them. /s

Edited to add the /s for clarity, because the NIST recommended remediation in 2023 for emailing a password is "burn everything down and pretend the organization never existed". /s

Again, adding that /s since that's not actually what NIST says to do, and I am, at best, paraphrasing.

I wasn’t trying to claim what was happening here, simply that one (extremely) bad practice increases the chance of another.

But in situations like this there is a much larger chance it’s being stored in plain text.

I suppose, but OP said in the title that the passwords were being stored in plaintext, despite that not being the case.

Using "we use a reversible hash" to claim "we don't store passwords in plain text" is the "corn syrup is not sugar" of the cybersecurity world.

It's technically correct, while also a bald faced lie.

Not sure what you mean here, this is what the forum post said:

After emailing (admittedly not current best practice), the passwords are hashed and only the hash is stored.

Also if they store a copy of that email they're effectively storing the password in plaintext even if they e properly made a salty hash brown for the database.

Yep. And their own email system is probably also logging it somewhere. So are various servers along the way to it's destination.

Why wouldn't it be generated and sent immediately? If someone has the inclination to do this type of thing, they probably also want to do things synchronously and immediately.

Because one egregious decision normally begets another.

Look at it this way, if you walk into a pizza joint and there are roaches wandering around on the walls, is it not more likely the food is also unsafe to eat?

Yes, this could just be one horrible decision, but this decision shows you where the mind of the developer/team was when thinking through their security.

You actually agree with me more than you disagree. If they have the mentality to send out clear text passwords, they probably don't hage the natural talent to design an asynchronous system.