Re:Input type="password" Needs to Grow Up
by tptacek on Monday December 13, 2010 @12:14PM
(#2001128)
In a perfect world, it would lessen the impact of phishing by disclosing only a crackable password hash to a phisher. In the real world, phishers will just construct phishing sites that appear to use the "secure" password type but actually don't.
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Then a password UI that can't be forged could be used, but I agree if you're going to do it, do it right.
Re:Input type="password" Needs to Grow Up
by tptacek on Monday December 13, 2010 @12:40PM
(#2001255)
Have you considered how hard it would be to create a password FORM input that couldn't be forged?
Re:Input type="password" Needs to Grow Up
by metageek on Monday December 13, 2010 @02:40PM
(#2001703)
How about this: if focus is in a password field, then you get a visual signal somewhere in the chrome--e.g., the color of the location bar changes. Something that HTML+JS just can't do.
Re:Input type="password" Needs to Grow Up
by tptacek on Monday December 13, 2010 @03:01PM
(#2001771)
We can't train users to look for a lock icon to see if they're SSL encrypted, so I'm not optimistic that something as subtle as a URL bar change is going to guide them to secure password inputs.
Consider this, then: a secure password box is put at the very very bottom of the page in an obscure location. JS is used to make a fake one that is prominent. How will you deal with that?
Yes: trivial. Have the user type in an area outside the page.
So....let's just discard with web security altogether.
Re:Input type="password" Needs to Grow Up
by tptacek on Monday December 13, 2010 @12:51PM
(#2001313)
Hard problems don't become more tractable just because you get angry at them.
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Re:Input type="password" Needs to Grow Up
by tptacek on Monday December 13, 2010 @12:55PM
(#2001322)
Our failure to connect on this point seems to be getting militant.
I'm not suggesting that nothing should be done to solve the plaintext password problem.
I'm suggesting that your proposed solution does very little to address the incident that motivated you to post it (the Gawker compromise).
Instead of advocating for your solution, I'm encouraging you to advocate for a much, much better solution. The only downside I can see to my suggestion over your suggestion, apart from the fact that it requires approximately 50 lines more code, is that you didn't come up with it.
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