Fantastic passwords and where to find them

The humble password is broken. The internet is littered with poor security practices and password breaches, but the world is not ready to go password free yet. So what can we do to protect our users?

Let's take a look at how we currently protect passwords, at what we can throw away from those processes and what we can bring in to strengthen our users' passwords. Together we can move the world from "password1" to "correct horse battery staple" and beyond!

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Links:

How to Encourage Stronger Passwords: P1e@$e $t0p Using Bad Rules: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2018/05/encourage-stronger-passwords-stop-using-bad-password-rules.html
Better passwords in Ruby applications with the Pwned Passwords API:
https://www.twilio.com/blog/2018/03/better-passwords-in-ruby-applications-pwned-passwords-api.html
Round up: Libraries for checking Pwned Passwords in your 7 favorite languages: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2018/06/round-up-libraries-for-checking-pwned-passwords-in-your-7-favorite-languages.html

1,464 Western Australian government officials used ‘Password123’ as their password. Cool, cool: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/22/western-australian-government-officials-used-password-their-password-cool-cool/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9e679e8f517a

Gems:

No BS Password checker: https://github.com/cmer/nobspw
zxcvbn-js: https://github.com/bitzesty/zxcvbn-js (but it's not JS...)
strong_password: https://github.com/bdmac/strong_password

Pwned: https://github.com/philnash/pwned
devise-pwned_password: https://github.com/michaelbanfield/devise-pwned_password

Transcript

1. FANTASTIC PASSWORDS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM @philnash
2. Phil Nash @philnash http://philna.sh philnash@twilio.com
3. My first password: “nash” “atom” @philnash
4. I GOT HACKED @philnash
5. PASSWORDS ARE TERRIBLE @philnash
6. GUIDELINES @philnash
7. Tom Carr @ItsMeTomC "Your password must contain at least 8 letters, a capital, a plot, a protagonist with good character development, a twist & a happy ending." 11:56 PM - Oct 13, 2014 3,520 5,019 people are talking about this @philnash
8. Guidelines •  Uppercase •  Lowercase •  Numbers •  Special characters @philnash
9. password @philnash
10. Password1! @philnash
11. Guidelines Change passwords regularly @philnash
12. Password123! @philnash
13. PATTERNS @philnash
14. Western Australia Government Security Audit 234,000 passwords were assessed 1/4 of passwords were deemed "weak" passwords 1,464 passwords were "Password123" (source) @philnash
15. Western Australia Government Security Audit @philnash
16. My "best" password •  8 characters long •  Numbers and letters (uppercase only) •  Model number of my hi-fi @philnash
17. @philnash
19. I GOT HACKED @philnash
20. REPETITION @philnash
21. BREACHES @philnash
22. @philnash
23. HOW DO WE FIX THIS? @philnash
24. THE GUIDELINES WERE WRONG @philnash
25. @philnash
26. New guidelines From the ACSC, the NCSC and NIST •  At least 13 characters •  Accept all characters •  Don't allow insecure passwords •  Dictionary words •  Repeated or sequential characters (e.g. ‘aaaaaa’, ‘1234abcd’) •  Context specific words (e.g. username, email, app name) •  Passwords that have been in a breach @philnash
27. IN RUBY? @philnash
28. Devise config.password_length = 6..128 @philnash
29. Authlogic validates :password, confirmation: { if: :require_password? }, length: { minimum: 8, if: :require_password? } 01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. @philnash
30. Clearance # Nothing @philnash
31. Avoid devise_security_extension password_strength @philnash
32. Suggestions validates :password, length: { minimum: 14 } nobspw zxcvbn-js strong_password @philnash
33. DEMO @philnash
34. INSECURE PASSWORDS? @philnash
35. PWNED PASSWORDS @philnash
36. Pwned Passwords 517,238,891 passwords previously exposed in data breaches @philnash
37. Pwned Passwords API ⚠ Don't worry ⚠ @philnash
38. Pwned Passwords API 1.  Get the SHA1 hash of the password 2.  Take the first 5 characters of the hash 3.  https://api.pwnedpasswords.com/range/#{prefix} 4.  Check if the remainder of the hash is in the result @philnash
39. PWNED GEM @philnash
40. DEMO @philnash
41. Pwned https://github.com/philnash/pwned devise-pwned_password @philnash
42. PASSWORDS ARE TERRIBLE @philnash
43. PASSWORD GUIDELINES ARE WORSE @philnash
44. MAKE PASSWORDS LONGER @philnash
45. CHECK AGAINST BREACHES AND DICTIONARIES @philnash
46. IMPLEMENT TWO FACTOR AUTHENTICATION @philnash
47. THANKS! @philnash
48. QUESTIONS OR BAD PASSWORD JOKES @philnash
49. Thanks! @philnash http://philna.sh philnash@twilio.com