Skip to content

Commit 01b5398

Browse files
Tweak Ashley Madison
The Ashley Madison story is much more complex, so let's briefly acknowledge that before focusing on the password algorithm (the point in this case). Signed-off-by: David A. Wheeler <[email protected]>
1 parent f5f9cdb commit 01b5398

File tree

1 file changed

+1
-1
lines changed

1 file changed

+1
-1
lines changed

secure_software_development_fundamentals.md

Lines changed: 1 addition & 1 deletion
Original file line numberDiff line numberDiff line change
@@ -4506,7 +4506,7 @@ You should allow users to require the use of two-factor authentication (2FA), ei
45064506
Also, beware of implementing these algorithms only on the client side. It is fine to implement them on the client side (because that prevents the server from ever discovering the password the user enters), as long as they are *also* implemented on the server. The danger is doing them *only* on the client; if that happens, then what is stored in the server is no different from storing passwords in the clear. Once attackers get the password database, they can simply create or modify their own client to log into anyone’s account.
45074507

45084508
> 😱 STORY TIME: Ashley Madison data breach
4509-
> Ashley Madison is a Canadian commercial online dating service founded in 2002 and marketed as enabling cheating on romantic partners. In 2015 attackers stole its customer data. Ashley Madison had correctly used the **bcrypt** routine to store user passwords. Unfortunately, they also often stored passwords encoded using the **MD5** hashing algorithm, which is not appropriate for storing passwords (as noted above). Attackers used these unprotected MD5 password hashes to decipher more than 11 million of these accounts' passwords in just 10 days, enabling them to log into those accounts (["Once seen as bulletproof, 11 million+ Ashley Madison passwords already cracked" by Dan Goodin, 2015](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/once-seen-as-bulletproof-11-million-ashley-madison-passwords-already-cracked/)).
4509+
> Ashley Madison is a Canadian commercial online dating service founded in 2002 and marketed as enabling cheating on romantic partners. In 2015 attackers stole its customer data. Many issues were revealed at that point; we will focus on one here. Ashley Madison had correctly used the **bcrypt** routine to store user passwords. Unfortunately, in many cases they had *also* stored passwords encoded using the **MD5** hashing algorithm, which is not an appropriate algorithm for storing passwords (as noted above). Attackers used these unprotected MD5 password hashes to decipher more than 11 million of these accounts' passwords in just 10 days, enabling them to log into those accounts (["Once seen as bulletproof, 11 million+ Ashley Madison passwords already cracked" by Dan Goodin, 2015](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/once-seen-as-bulletproof-11-million-ashley-madison-passwords-already-cracked/)).
45104510

45114511
#### Quiz 3.5: Storing Passwords
45124512

0 commit comments

Comments
 (0)