The Secret Life of Passwords

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/magazine/the-secret-life-of-passwords.html

by r0h1n • 12 years ago

127 34 12 years ago

john_b• 12 years ago

"Cantor Fitzgerald did have extensive contingency plans in place, including a requirement that all employees tell their work passwords to four nearby colleagues."

This baffles my mind. Is this common practice in finance? What would stop a malicious actor from impersonating someone whose password they knew? Even if these passwords aren't tied to someone's identity in any way, they presumably exist to secure sensitive data and/or systems, but then they're shared with officemates like Dilbert comics?

ryan-c• 12 years ago

Secret sharing systems are a good solution to this.

I wrote a basic command line only one[1] a few years ago, but command line UI doesn't really make for "usable by everyone". It would be nice if there were something like this that had a good UI.

1. https://github.com/ryancdotorg/threshcrypt

pwnna• 12 years ago

For the purpose at hand, having some secrets accessible by multiple parties without sharing the same password comes in handy[1]. I'm surprised that this is not a feature of a lot of software that relies on encryption with keys based on passphrases.

[1]: example: https://code.google.com/p/cryptsetup/. I believe that the way it works is it encrypts the actual decryption key for data with keys derived from passphrases multiple times, so any one of the those passphrases can decrypt the key, which then can access the data.

peter303• 12 years ago

Our company has interesting contradiction in this regards. On one hand all accounts, files and digital communication belong to the company. Assume you could instantly lose access in a sudden layoff. On the other hand the annual IT security video course tells you encrypt like crazy and leave no digital assets in public.

hackuser2• 12 years ago

They don't have a master cryptographic key?

hackuser2• 12 years ago

Agreed. They might as have everyone use the same password.

Aren't there regulations for security of financial information? It's hard to believe this passes muster. If it's a 'reasonable precautions' regulation, this fails badly.

perlgeek• 12 years ago

It provides perfect deniability. Whatever you do in the computer system, there were four others who might have done it in your stead.

towelguy• 12 years ago

Couldn't they just access the data directly from the databases?

Something they couldn't access then. Are they talking about passwords for 3rd party services? Or perhaps passwords for encrypted hard drives?

mlrtime• 12 years ago

Imaging your entire IT department being wiped out instantly overnight, managers included. How quickly would it take you to restore access to your infrastructure?

comrh2• 12 years ago

If someone from my loved one's job called me 24 hours after they were killed in a horrific terrorist attack to talk about passwords I don't think I would be able to contain my vitriol.

mikeash2• 12 years ago

Why even try to contain it? I'd let loose upon the caller with the fury of a thousand suns.

gumby2• 12 years ago

If someone from my loved one's (and family's sole breadwinner's) job called me 24 hours after they were killed in a horrific terrorist attack to talk about passwords because the company was in a crisis I think I would be relieved that someone was working to make sure I could continue to feed my kids while I figured out what to do next.

And if you see how Cantor Fitzgerald treated its employees and their families in the wake of that crisis, you'd see that helping them was the right thing.

The banking industry may have metastasized from a service industry to a giant vampire squid, but that doesn't mean every company turned into slimy blood-sucking leeches.

(And maybe C-F were heartless leeches before the attack and reformed due to their literal near-death experience -- I really paid little attention to them until that day. But they are famous for how they responded and rebuilt the business).

comrh2• 12 years ago

I'm a little confused how them getting their passwords help feed your kids after the employee is gone. I think what they did afterwards was definitely great, but that doesn't change my opinion that if that happened to me some passwords would be the last thing I would want to talk about.

Money, finance, jobs, passwords, it all seems so pointless when I think of it against that loss.

akkartik• 12 years ago

I didn't realize lambda was a motif in gay culture too. Makes me love it even more.

qq66• 12 years ago

Will Fitzsimons had better change his debit card password immediately.

seanieb• 12 years ago

Whats terrifying is that they are referring to "their password" and not their passwords.

Password reuse is much worse that having a weak password. Hackers only brute force high value targets, everyone else should just aim to have unique passwords for every service they use.

However, the average person can only remember 5-10 unique passwords and they have many many accounts...password reuse. For the average person password managers aren't an option for normal people, so we have a big problem.

kijin2• 12 years ago

For the average person password managers aren't an option

Why not?

Every major browser in its default configuration offers to remember your passwords, and some will even offer to sync them across all your devices.

The only thing that's missing is an offer to generate random passwords automatically, for which you currently need an add-on/extension. But even without that ability, the browser is already a pretty decent password manager.

crazygringo• 12 years ago

Because it breaks ALL the time.

On plenty of sites, Chrome/FF/IE/etc. will fail to recognize a user or password field. They'll often fail to recognize them at account creation. Sometimes you'll need multiple accounts on a single domain, which Chrome can't handle (for example). I could go on and on...

Browsers remember passwords as a mere convenience, when it happens to work. They are in no way "proper" password managers, which are encrypted with a master password, can be exported and backed up, handle multiple accounts, etc...

iamleppert• 12 years ago

What is wrong with these companies that they are having to brute force passwords?

Passwords to business-critical systems should be stored in a safe, in an off-site location (preferably multiple offsite locations).

varikin• 12 years ago

Like their offsite location in the other tower that was also destroyed? I don't mean to say you are wrong, but many times contingency plans rarely consider such devastating circumstances. Once heard a rumor that a large defense contractor had a backup plan that included flying disk drives from one coast to the other to safe guard against nuclear strikes on either coast or both by having a day old backup in the air. Do you have a plan for nuclear strikes on both coasts?

mey• 12 years ago

I've considered it, but it really comes down to what the business needs. Does the business need to continue to operate in the face of a nuclear winter? The government sure, but most day-day operations of a retail chain would be out the window at that point.

Taking this to another extreme, does a DR plan need to account for the earth no longer being viable? Do you need system/data backups in space?

danielweber• 12 years ago

I like the mouse-over effects here. They aren't obtrusive, messing with the normal functioning of a webpage.

ddebernardy2• 12 years ago

"Even in America, old habits, like his KGB-induced skepticism of the police lingered."

[Cough]. Even in America? More like especially nowadays, no?

Beautifully written piece, otherwise.

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

See Greenwald's recent (past day or so) Intercept piece on trust in the US since Snowden, worldwide.

Massive declines.

ddebernardy2• 12 years ago

I'd imagine so, yeah. It's hardly a new trend though. There also was a massive decline when George W Bush decided to head to Irak. And before that, there was enough mistrust -- indeed hatred -- in US policy to prompt nutjobs to conduct 9/11.

hammock• 12 years ago

Side comment about the web design- very cool and clear way of integrating audiovisual stories into the article. Lots of people try to find novel ways to share interviews/first-person accounts that they've recorded, with mixed results. This piece strikes me as best in class.

zarify• 12 years ago

Well I guess talking to people and telling them you're writing an article about "The Secret Life of Passwords" is more novel than giving them a call pretending to be from their bank or telco.

I dearly hope that those people who actually told passwords to the author were either no longer using them or immediately changed them to something better on reflection of just how terrible they were. My mother kept a door from her parents' first house (which they built after emigrating after WW2) for sentimental reasons, that doesn't mean she relied on the old antique lock to secure her current house.

nly• 12 years ago

I found the part about passwords being personal mementos quite charming. I hope I'm not the only one.

Does anyone feel like sharing?

divegeek• 12 years ago

Sure, I will. I just retired this little gem, after six months of faithful service: ahbag6uWXa0aj0ee

Ahh, the memories.

hlfcoding• 12 years ago

Goes to show 'password' is a total misnomer that encourages bad security practice.

The Secret Life of Passwords

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