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Comment by llama052 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I can't stand the forced password changes where you can't use the last X passwords, or passwords that expire every 30 days. A lot of times it's security compliance entities that push this down to companies, for instance PCI, etc all require those. I think even the new NIST standards address these practices, but the compliance entities are slow and far from pragmatic.

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Yep. I can tell you that currently, leading practice involves such measures. I don't agree, but CIS, which is essentially the current gold standard, says so. People who get paid to do this often don't bother griping about it, because they are being paid to harden to a standard and that standard is what it is.

This unfortunately leaves a disconnect between the people who harden (who might actually hear about issues), and the people who write. Even if the writers do hear, it won't be implemented until the next revision.

Yeah PCI or FedRAMP have this 10 char password requirement, which of course no one can remember a 10 char password. So companies just make the password a pattern with some variations, effectively reducing the complexity to a tenth of a random 8 char password and the people who know the pattern leave the company so it’s effectively public. So much for math.

yes but the rule does enhance security.

the password rules force you to choose [heuristically] guessable passwords, therefore they must be changed every 90 days. simple!

It doesn't if users are working around it.

Right. The first rule of password security: if you have a large enough user base, the odds of a user writing down a password increase, and as passwords become sufficiently difficult to remember, the odds approach 100% at some point that _some_ people are writing down passwords. No amount of defense in depth can protect the "I have a Post-It note under my keyboard" problem, if people can get into your building.

We've handled this by mandating password manager use and pushing length requirements to absurd levels to where it truly is easier to just use the manager, which has two factor.

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