brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) wrote:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
So, while dictionary-checking sysops' passwords make a lot of sense, there's very little point in limiting passwords of the
non-privileged accounts.
At the moment we don't have a separate switch for sysops, nor any control which would prevent blank-password accounts from being made into sysops. I'd rather risk disabling a few accounts temporarily than keep the incredibly dangerous sysop accounts open (which could be used potenially to great destructive effect).
Could you elaborate on the "temporarily" part ?
Brion Vibber wrote:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Could you elaborate on the "temporarily" part ?
Until I finish the force-user-to-change-password-on-next-login code. (Probably tomorrow.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
I agree, that's probably the right thing to do for non-sysop accounts. (Although we should perhaps zap any that are not re-activated within say, three months from now?)
Please keep the _sysop_ accounts with empty/trivial passwords blocked indefinitely -- now people know they exist, they can easily be searched for by any potential cracker, with potentially disastrous effects.
Perhaps some of these trivial-password sysop accounts could be re-activated manually on request, if they have an E-mail address that can be manually or automatically verified by an E-mail exchange with the purported owner? Otherwise, it's going to be quite difficult ever to verify ownership for these accounts, and they should probably remain locked indefinitely.
-- Neil
Please keep the _sysop_ accounts with empty/trivial passwords blocked indefinitely -- now people know they exist, they can easily be searched for by any potential cracker, with potentially disastrous effects.
Agreed.
Perhaps some of these trivial-password sysop accounts could be re-activated manually on request, if they have an E-mail address that can be manually or automatically verified by an E-mail exchange with the purported owner? Otherwise, it's going to be quite difficult ever to verify ownership for these accounts, and they should probably remain locked indefinitely.
Tough. Besides, I fear it would be all too simple to reclaim ownership of an account that wasn't yours by doing a nice little email exchange, as described. How would you prove that you were that person? Too many what-ifs.
Rob Church
On 1/31/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Tough. Besides, I fear it would be all too simple to reclaim ownership of an account that wasn't yours by doing a nice little email exchange, as described. How would you prove that you were that person? Too many what-ifs.
By simply knowing that you had a blank password you 'prove' that you had access prior to the lockout (since Brion didn't post a list).. Of course if we get a bunch of requests for sysop accounts without blank passwords...
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