That’s very unlikely. It’s running UBB Threads, which, from what I can tell, has an auth subsystem, which au minimum would do hashing. If it’s providing you with a default at sign-up, that’s different and is what appears to be a configurable setting.
If it is completely generated for you, here’s what probably happening:
User creation module runs a password generator and stores this and the username in memory as string variables.
User creation module calls back to storage module to store new user data in db, including the value of the generated password var.
Either the storage module or another middleware module hashes the password while preparing to store.
Storage module reports success to user creation.
User creation module prints the vars to the welcome template and unloads them from memory.
TL;DR as this is running on a long-established commercial php forum package, with DB storage, it is incredibly unlikely that the password is stored in the DB as plaintext. At most it is likely stored in memory during creation. I cannot confirm, however, as it is not FOSS.
Yeah if they send the password in an email in plain text that’s not storing it. You can send the email before you store the password while it’s still in memory and then hash it and store it.
Stored in memory is still stored. It’s still unencrypted during data processing. Still bad practice and a security vulnerability at best. Email isn’t E2E encrypted.
You have the text input feed directly into the encryption layer without an intermediary variable. The plaintext data should never be passable to an accessible variable which it must be to send the plaintext password in the email because it’s not an asynchronous process.
I’m surprised so many people are getting hung up on basic infosec.
The front end to backend traffic should be encrypted, hashing occurs on the backend. The backend should never have access to a variable with a plaintext password.
I’m going to have to stop replying because I don’t have the time to run every individual through infosec 101.
I’m going to have to stop replying because I don’t have the time to run every individual through infosec 101.
Sorry, but you’re missing the point here. You cannot do anything with a password without storing it in memory. That’s not even infosec 101, that’s computing 101. Every computation is toggling bits between 1 and 0 and guess where these bits are stored? That’s right: in memory.
The backend should never have access to a variable with a plaintext password.
You know how the backend gets that password? In a plaintext variable. Because the server needs to decrypt the TLS data before doing any computations on it (and yes I know about homomorphic encryption, but no that wouldn’t work here).
Yes, I agree it’s terrible form to send out plain text passwords. And it would make me question their security practices as well. I agree that lots of people overreacted to your mistake, but this thread has proven that you’re not yet as knowledgeable as you claim to be.
how long have you been a web developer? Because I’ve been doing it for six years and almost every web app I’ve ever seen uses http with TLS to send the plaintext password to the backend, where it’s popped into a request var at the controller level, then passed as an instance var to the service level, salted, hashed and stored. This includes apps that have to submit themselves for HIPAA compliance because they deal with PHI.
I asked because what you’re describing doesn’t do much if you understand how common web frameworks and runtime environments work.
The framework needs to parse the HTTP request. That means holding the parameters in a variable somewhere just to arrange them in a datastructure for processing.
But let’s ignore that and say we have some kind of system that stream parses the request right out of the buffer (which itself still needs to be held in memory for a bit, but let’s ignore that), and when it matches a preconfigured password parameter, passes it directly to the hashing system and nowhere else. I don’t think any framework in existence actually does this, but let’s run with it.
We’ll still need to pass that value by whatever the language uses for function passing. It will be in a variable at some point. Since we rarely write in C these days unless we have to, the variable doesn’t go away in the system until the garbage collection runs. Most systems don’t use ref counting (and I think it’s a mistake to disregard the simplicity of ref counting so universally, but that’s another discussion), so that could happen whenever the thread gets around to it.
But even if it runs in a timely fashion, the memory page now has to be released to the OS. Except most runtimes don’t. First, the variable in question almost certainly was not the only thing on that page. Second, runtimes rarely, if ever, release pages back to the OS. They figure if you’re using that much memory once, you’ll probably do it again. Why waste time releasing a page just to make you spend more time getting it again?
And we’re still not done. Let’s say we do release the page. The OS doesn’t zero it out. That old variable is still there, and it could be handed over to a completely different process. Due to Copy on Write, it won’t be cleared until that other process tries to write it. In other words, it could still be read by some random process on the system.
And we haven’t even mentioned what happens if we start swapping. IIRC, some Linux kernel versions in the 2.4 series decided to swap out to disk ahead of time, always having a copy of memory on disk. Even if you’re not running such an ancient version, you have to consider that the kernel could do as it pleases. Yeah, now that var potentially has a long lifespan.
To do what you want, we would need to coordinate clearing the var from the code down through the framework, runtime, and kernel. All to protect against a hypothetical memory attack. Which are actually quite difficult to pull off in practice. It’d be easier to attack the client’s machine in some way.
And on top of it, you’re running around with an undeserved sense of superiority while it’s clear you haven’t actually thought this through.
That’s very unlikely. It’s running UBB Threads, which, from what I can tell, has an auth subsystem, which au minimum would do hashing. If it’s providing you with a default at sign-up, that’s different and is what appears to be a configurable setting.
If it is completely generated for you, here’s what probably happening:
TL;DR as this is running on a long-established commercial php forum package, with DB storage, it is incredibly unlikely that the password is stored in the DB as plaintext. At most it is likely stored in memory during creation. I cannot confirm, however, as it is not FOSS.
It sends the user generated password, not an auto generated one.
Yeah if they send the password in an email in plain text that’s not storing it. You can send the email before you store the password while it’s still in memory and then hash it and store it.
Stored in memory is still stored. It’s still unencrypted during data processing. Still bad practice and a security vulnerability at best. Email isn’t E2E encrypted.
Given what I know about how computers accept user input, I am fascinated to hear what the alternative is.
You have the text input feed directly into the encryption layer without an intermediary variable. The plaintext data should never be passable to an accessible variable which it must be to send the plaintext password in the email because it’s not an asynchronous process.
I’m surprised so many people are getting hung up on basic infosec.
Are you suggesting to do all this on the frontend before it goes to the backend?
The front end to backend traffic should be encrypted, hashing occurs on the backend. The backend should never have access to a variable with a plaintext password.
I’m going to have to stop replying because I don’t have the time to run every individual through infosec 101.
Sorry, but you’re missing the point here. You cannot do anything with a password without storing it in memory. That’s not even infosec 101, that’s computing 101. Every computation is toggling bits between 1 and 0 and guess where these bits are stored? That’s right: in memory.
You know how the backend gets that password? In a plaintext variable. Because the server needs to decrypt the TLS data before doing any computations on it (and yes I know about homomorphic encryption, but no that wouldn’t work here).
Yes, I agree it’s terrible form to send out plain text passwords. And it would make me question their security practices as well. I agree that lots of people overreacted to your mistake, but this thread has proven that you’re not yet as knowledgeable as you claim to be.
how long have you been a web developer? Because I’ve been doing it for six years and almost every web app I’ve ever seen uses http with TLS to send the plaintext password to the backend, where it’s popped into a request var at the controller level, then passed as an instance var to the service level, salted, hashed and stored. This includes apps that have to submit themselves for HIPAA compliance because they deal with PHI.
I asked because what you’re describing doesn’t do much if you understand how common web frameworks and runtime environments work.
The framework needs to parse the HTTP request. That means holding the parameters in a variable somewhere just to arrange them in a datastructure for processing.
But let’s ignore that and say we have some kind of system that stream parses the request right out of the buffer (which itself still needs to be held in memory for a bit, but let’s ignore that), and when it matches a preconfigured password parameter, passes it directly to the hashing system and nowhere else. I don’t think any framework in existence actually does this, but let’s run with it.
We’ll still need to pass that value by whatever the language uses for function passing. It will be in a variable at some point. Since we rarely write in C these days unless we have to, the variable doesn’t go away in the system until the garbage collection runs. Most systems don’t use ref counting (and I think it’s a mistake to disregard the simplicity of ref counting so universally, but that’s another discussion), so that could happen whenever the thread gets around to it.
But even if it runs in a timely fashion, the memory page now has to be released to the OS. Except most runtimes don’t. First, the variable in question almost certainly was not the only thing on that page. Second, runtimes rarely, if ever, release pages back to the OS. They figure if you’re using that much memory once, you’ll probably do it again. Why waste time releasing a page just to make you spend more time getting it again?
And we’re still not done. Let’s say we do release the page. The OS doesn’t zero it out. That old variable is still there, and it could be handed over to a completely different process. Due to Copy on Write, it won’t be cleared until that other process tries to write it. In other words, it could still be read by some random process on the system.
And we haven’t even mentioned what happens if we start swapping. IIRC, some Linux kernel versions in the 2.4 series decided to swap out to disk ahead of time, always having a copy of memory on disk. Even if you’re not running such an ancient version, you have to consider that the kernel could do as it pleases. Yeah, now that var potentially has a long lifespan.
To do what you want, we would need to coordinate clearing the var from the code down through the framework, runtime, and kernel. All to protect against a hypothetical memory attack. Which are actually quite difficult to pull off in practice. It’d be easier to attack the client’s machine in some way.
And on top of it, you’re running around with an undeserved sense of superiority while it’s clear you haven’t actually thought this through.