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+#+title: Password Security
+#+date: 2019-12-16
+#+description: Password security basics.
+#+filetags: :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]].