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Comment by jeremyevans | Hacker News Reader

In case you are wondering how it handles password encryption and storage, it appears to use a custom password hash based on SHA256 and scrypt: https://github.com/18F/identity-idp/blob/980c2aa26397f530673...

Passwords appear to be stored in the users table in the "encrypted_password" column, and it does not appear that any database-based security is used. This is one RCE/SQLI vulnerability away from exposing the password hashes for all users. To be fair, that's probably true of most sites that store password hashes, but I would have expected better from 18F.

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Can you elaborate on what you were hoping for?

Restricting access to the password hashes using database security so that a vulnerability in the web application cannot expose password hashes unless a separate vulnerability in the database was also exploited. In PostgreSQL (and other SQL databases), this generally involves having multiple database users with separate permissions, making it so that the database user the web application uses doesn't not have SELECT permissions for the password hash column.

If you want an example for a Ruby authentication library that does this, there is Rodauth: https://github.com/jeremyevans/rodauth

Or maybe they have stronger access controls within their production environment and we don't see that specific configuration in the code?

That could be the case, but if you are going to open source the application, what would be the point of trying to hide it?

Considering that password hashes are stored in the users table, it seems unlikely. While you can use PostgreSQL to implement per-column permissions, it's a fairly large pain, and you have to make sure every query you are using that selects from the table does not select that column. Rails/ActiveRecord by default selects all columns in the model's table, and it's a fair amount of work to work around that.

what is database-based security?

It's an old craft that died somewhere around the dotcom hype in 2000.

It works with SQL, using language elements like VIEW, PROCEDURE, ROLE and GRANT

SQL Databases can still do it, but people who know how to use it are all retired or work in management now. :-)

Also: no web framework knows how to deal with it.

Based upon the various negative findings by the GSA IG's office I don't expect much from 18F. If you can't be bothered to comply with required government IT security requirements why should I trust you to comply with the ones you have made up for yourself.

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