I would imagine most users change their password by only 1 character, and maybe even in sequential order.
When time comes to change the password, it becomes password1234 instead of password123. Or password234. Something easy to remember, most users don’t care about best security practices, and changing to a similar password is very convenient. Especially if it’s “only” for work stuff
The original idea was that you would take how long it took to brute-force a password, then require the password be changed before that. But we have better hashing now, like bcrypt, where you can tune it so that brute forcing anything would take 100s of years.
NIST removed password expiration from their recommendations in 2020. Instead they recommend only forcing password changes when compromise is suspected.
The main argument is that they do not make users or systems demonstrably safer and encourage bad password habits.
Encourages users to just add a rotating number or other not too secure thing to their password. I know that’s what I did when I worked somewhere with that dumbfuck policy.
Yep. My least secure password is the one I use at work because I’m restricted to 9-12 characters, can’t be sequential forwards or backwards including keys next to each other (abc, 123, qwerty), can’t begin with a number, must contain at least three numbers, must be at least four characters different from your last twelve passwords, and must be changed every 90 days. Oh and it can’t include your first or last name.
Most of my coworkers just use a family members name and then change a few numbers at the end and keep a post it note at their desk with the numbers so they don’t forget it.
It was never best practices for anyone who had common sense.
It just forced people to make insecure, easy to remember passwords, cause they were gonna be changed in again soon so why make it complicated and hard to remember.
At my work the company wanted to show some gratitude and sent out email with free ice cream vouchers to everybody. Many suspected this was just another one of these cybersecurity email tests, so the company had to clarify it’s all real.
I think it’s hilarious the thought about hackers using ice cream as bait. Maybe that would work?
The place where I work does these regularly, and you get slammed hard if you fall for one, and frowned at if you don't use the "Report Phishing" button on them.
But the knuckleheads contracted testing out to a company that always sends the tests from the same domain.
So anyone even the slightest bit savvy about spam/phishing/email headers can set an Outlook rule to dump test emails to a special folder and pop an alert.
Installs antivirus on servers that wrecks application performance
installs content filtering proxy that prevents developers from reading “hacking materials” like OWASP documentation
won’t let developers install anything on their own machines without filing a ticket and waiting 6 weeks
pushes unannounced antivirus updates that pop up OS security dialogs like “Netscan Antivirus would like to monitor all network traffic. Enter your password to approve”, and is surprised when users don’t enter their passwords.
wait untill you hear “if i remember correctly my email password was {name} {surname} something @ gmail.com… what do you mean that’s not it? why do i even need a password?”…
I used to have a lady I worked with who was like this. She had the common sense of a fucking carrot and was dumb as shit. What was weird is she was highly skilled in the one job she was hired for, the rest of the time she would click on everything and I would had to fix her computer multiple times a week. One time I tried to walk her thru something on the phone and I told her to click on an icon, her response was “Whats an icon?”
Sysadmin: “A clear indication of phishing email is the sense of urgency. We would never send out any email regarding urgent updates that needs immediate action.”
Also sysadmin: “URGENT!!! You must update your system now before Friday!!! Click link here for instructions! Otherwise you will be locked out!”
Then do this to computer-shaped instrument controller systems that have accounts that can not have passwords changed or the application won’t run. Or service accounts, so if you pop in after 6 months, nobody knows the current password and the IT guy only comes in 2 hours/week. And that was yesterday. And no, no contact information present…
Then they have you make it some 12 character length minimum string with mixed case and special characters and dictionary lookup so it isn’t some common phrase but you’re also logging in through a telnet instance onto a Unix system.
A website once complained my password contained 3 consecutive letters there were 1 away from each other. This was back when I used sentences for passwords. It was complaining about the word worst because of r-s-t.
That’s wack. Passphrases are second only to random passwords generated by a password generator in terms of security, character proximity doesn’t matter with that much length.
Searches for things online by typing it as a post on social media instead of using a search engine as in: "Google what is the weather like today near me?"
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