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+#+date: 2019-12-16
+#+title: Password Security
+
+* Users
+
+** Why Does It Matter?
+
+Information security, including passwords and identities, has become one of the
+most important digital highlights of the last decade. With [[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/12/28/data-breaches-2018-billions-hit-growing-number-cyberattacks/2413411002/][billions of people
+affected by data breaches each year]], there's a greater need to introduce strong
+information security systems. If you think you've been part of a breach, or you
+want to check and see, you can use [[https://haveibeenpwned.com/][Have I Been Pwned]] to see if your email has
+been involved in any public breaches. Remember that there's a possibility that a
+company experienced a breach and did not report it to anyone.
+
+** How Do I Protect Myself?
+
+The first place to start with any personal security check-up is to gather a list
+of all the different websites, apps, or programs that require you to have login
+credentials. Optionally, once you know where your information is being stored,
+you can sort the list from the most-important items such as banks or government
+logins to less important items such as your favorite meme site. You will want to
+ensure that your critical logins are secure before getting to the others.
+
+Once you think you have a good idea of all your different authentication
+methods, I recommend using a password manager such as [[https://bitwarden.com/][Bitwarden]]. Using a
+password manager allows you to automatically save your logins, create randomized
+passwords, and transfer passwords across devices. However, you'll need to
+memorize your "vault password" that allows you to open the password manager.
+It's important to make this something hard to guess since it would allow anyone
+who has it to access every password you've stored in there.
+
+Personally, I recommend using a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passphrase][passphrase]] instead of a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password][password]] for your vault
+password. Instead of using a string of characters (whether random or simple),
+use a phrase and add in symbols and a number. For example, your vault password
+could be =Racing-Alphabet-Gourd-Parrot3=. Swap the symbols out for whichever
+symbol you want, move the number around, and fine-tune the passphrase until you
+are confident that you can remember it whenever necessary.
+
+Once you've stored your passwords, make sure you continually check up on your
+account and make sure you aren't following bad password practices. Krebs on
+Security has a great [[https://krebsonsecurity.com/password-dos-and-donts/][blog post on password recommendations]]. Any time that a data
+breach happens, make sure you check to see if you were included, and if you need
+to reset any account passwords.
+
+* Developers
+
+** What Are the Basic Requirements?
+
+When developing any password-protected application, there are a few basic rules
+that anyone should follow even if they do not follow any official guidelines
+such as NIST. The foremost practice is to require users to use passwords that
+are at least 8 characters and cannot easily be guessed. This sounds extremely
+simple, but it requires quite a few different strategies. First, the application
+should check the potential passwords against a dictionary of insecure passwords
+such =password=, =1234abc=, or =application_name=.
+
+Next, the application should offer guidance on the strength of passwords being
+entered during enrollment. Further, NIST officially recommends *not*
+implementing any composition rules that make passwords hard to remember (e.g.
+passwords with letters, numbers, and special characters) and instead encouraging
+the use of long pass phrases which can include spaces. It should be noted that
+to be able to keep spaces within passwords, all unicode characters should be
+supported, and passwords should not be truncated.
+
+** What Does NIST Recommend?
+
+The National Institute of Standards and Technology ([[https://www.nist.gov][NIST]]) in the US Department
+of Commerce regularly publishes information around information security and
+digital identity guidelines. Recently, NIST published [[https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html][Special Publication
+800-63b]]: Digital Identity Guidelines and Authentication and Lifecycle
+Management.
+
+#+BEGIN_QUOTE
+A Memorized Secret authenticator - commonly referred to as a password or, if
+numeric, a PIN - is a secret value intended to be chosen and memorized by the
+user. Memorized secrets need to be of sufficient complexity and secrecy that
+it would be impractical for an attacker to guess or otherwise discover the
+correct secret value. A memorized secret is something you know.
+
+- NIST Special Publication 800-63B
+#+END_QUOTE
+
+NIST offers a lot of guidance on passwords, but I'm going to highlight just a
+few of the important factors:
+
+- Require passwords to be a minimum of 8 characters (6 characters if randomly
+  generated and be generated using an approved random bit generator).
+- Compare potential passwords against a list that contains values known to be
+  commonly-used, expected, or compromised.
+- Offer guidance on password strength, such as a strength meter.
+- Implement a rate-limiting mechanism to limit the number of failed
+  authentication attempts for each user account.
+- Do not require composition rules for passwords and do not require passwords to
+  be changed periodically (unless compromised).
+- Allow pasting of user identification and passwords to facilitate the use of
+  password managers.
+- Allow users to view the password as it is being entered.
+- Use secure forms of communication and storage, including salting and hashing
+  passwords using a one-way key derivation function.
+
+NIST offers further guidance on other devices that require specific security
+policies, querying for passwords, and more. All the information discussed so far
+comes from [[https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html][NIST SP800-63b]] but NIST offers a lot of information on digital
+identities, enrollment, identity proofing, authentication, lifecycle management,
+federation, and assertions in the total [[https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/][NIST SP800-63 Digital Identity
+Guidelines]].