News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on We'd lose our security certificate if we allowed pasting. Parent comment

Re:We'd lose our security certificate if we allowed pasting by danpalmer on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @07:30AM (#7703780)
In the 1980s I don't think hashing passwords was common, it would have taken too much processing power, and the database fields on the mainframe don't support weird characters or a length of more than 8 characters.

I wish this wasn't the case, but these systems are so old behind the scenes, that lots of it simply can't be changed without massive re-engineering. I have friends that work for a company who transfer COBOL applications from mainframes to JVM COBOL running on standard servers, it's a massive task, and takes years and lots of money.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:We'd lose our security certificate if we allowed pasting by crbaker on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @08:06AM (#7703902)
It will take these organisation years and lots of money to rebuild their reputations when their security malpractices catch up with them.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:We'd lose our security certificate if we allowed pasting by danielweber on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @09:49AM (#7704392)
I would love this to be true, since it would basically double my net worth, but it's very rare for a security incident to kill a company. Target is the exception, and just required two human sacrifices.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:We'd lose our security certificate if we allowed pasting by danielweber on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @09:52AM (#7704403)
It was standard to hash passwords in /etc/passwd back in the 1980s.

Still, when you pin code is limited to 1 million combinations, all the hashing in the world isn't going to save you. You need to keep your DB secure, no matter what, and that's where resources were applied.

[ Parent | on HN ]