yro.slashdot.org
> I suspect the OP did not verify the exact wording. The law requires retention of (among other things) "mot de passe ou données permettant de le vérifier ou de le modifie" (password or data to verify it or change it) so it seems that it would be enough to store the password hash and/or do a password reset when demanded by the law enforcement guys.
Problem with non-international laws is like the US State dissallowing adult content to be served to minors, that becomes a world-wide law not only localized. Hence why the internet needs an international governing body to truly control because it is global, a concept never before seen in history.
This law (in general) is going from the sublime to the ridiculous.
1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country#...
We need common sense & neutral specialists in control. This world is clearly becoming far too complex for the electable caste.
"No results found for "electable caste"."
- avoiding the pejorative-sounding 'ilk.' - but conveying the realm of demagogues who legislate unintended consequences along with their campaigns to save humanity from (depravity, etc.).
How do you reconcile those two sentences? As I read them, they directly contradict each other, even if by "electable caste" you mean the good looking and charismatic crooks who tend to get elected.
In short: there's plenty of reasons to be against this law without constructing new outrages.
It does outlaw hashed passwords in practice.
EDIT: as others have pointed out, you could simply store the plaintext passwords in another file with greater security, and have hashed ones in the DB. An even better option would be simply to get the hell out of france.
Or, start a consulting business in france to help people comply with this, and rake it in.
... WHERE user.password = hash(input)
... WHERE user.password = hash(input) OR user.password = input
... WHERE user.hashed_password = hash(input) OR user.hashed_password = input
This solves the problem of passwords being stored in plaintext (indeed a problem with frequent password reuse) while apparently getting around this silly French law.
Sure if the database is compromised anyone will be able to login to anyone's account, but the database is compromised so who cares?
Also if you wanted to make it secure you could restrict hash passwords to work only from certain IP addresses so you either have to be using a company internal machine or say the IP addresses from a police station.
He was referring to my rebuttal, which was initially downvoted for some reason.
WHERE user.password = hash(input) OR hash(user.password + skeleton_key) = input
Of course, now you have to keep skeleton_key a secret. Presumably you wouldn't store it in the same database as the password hashes, so losing the database wouldn't immediately grant access to everyone's account.
I'm not claiming this is particularly secure. In fact, it's kind of the opposite: it's intentionally adding a back door to your authentication system. But at least it's a door rather than a gaping hole :)
It's totally legal to store the hashed value with your live database as normal to provide authentication, and store the plain text version in a write only file on a separate system to try and give some additional level of security. This isn't a great solution, but it does provide hashed passwords for regular work, and plain text for when the police ask for it.
It's obviously a pretty stupid law, but to say it "outlaws" hashed passwords is just nonsense.
You are splitting hairs. It outlaws passwords where only the (salted) hash and not the plaintext is stored, which is the whole point of what's commonly known as "hashed passwords".
store the hashed value with your live database ... and store the plain text version in ... a separate system
Call that seperate system "the moneypot". I'm tempted to suggest that people just try that and see how that works out for them, given the inevitablity of failures of security and vigilance. But for the sake of the rest of us, let's not.
If someone has that level of control over your system to access a write only file on a separate secured system, make a copy and extract it somewhere else, they probably also have enough access to insert a piece of code into your authentication system to dump all the plaintext passwords to a separate file as people login over time.
The message remains the same for all users regardless of this law - Don't reuse passwords, you can't trust their security.
of course you aren't. We know this because you say you aren't. What you are is making a nuanced distinction between what you mean when you say "stores hashed passwords" and what is commonly meant by that.
The password (as well as full name, postal address, pseudonym, phone number) only needs to be kept if it is collected. So you must keep the password (and be able to give it upon request) only in the case you already store it.
Writing laws and contracts, in a way, seems like trying to make secure software. One has to define everything, and evaluate all possible "attack angles".
XKCD really is the geek equivalent of quoting scripture. Lessons for living.
Then log the plaintext passwords to a different file, encrypted with a public key. The corresponding private key would live on a separate machine (without internet access), and would only be used in cases where it's inevitable.
Wrap it up nicely if you must, say you've lost the key or something, but the important thing is that you don't lay down to fools.
Is this really a good idea when the fools are the government?
Refusing to comply with actual laws makes it quite likely that you'll be sued or arrested, which isn't a great idea for either a business or a personal project. There are obviously times when civil disobedience is called for, but I don't think this is one of them.
Once you get to be big enough, you get to bully the government. So get big fast.
If I had to run, say, Wordpress or SMF for a French client, I'd probably do as perlgeek suggests, and just hook the password create/change function to also store a public-key-encrypted version just for law enforcement / compliance purposes, and let the 3rd party software continue to authenticate as normal.
A good example of a case involving privacy and the margin of appreciation of a national lawmaker is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_and_Marper_v_United_Kingdom
P.S. To explain the legal situation to Americans: international conventions and particularly the European laws (like the aforementioned ECHR, which has a special court that accepts cases from a national level that want to appeal on the basis of the ECHR) are more important than national laws. It is a bit like the Constitution in the United States.
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conve...
Hopefully it all works out for Europe but I hope to God my country never goes down that route.
It's not like you can vote for judges on the supreme court in America directly, either.
When I say "covered less" I mean in the hysterical, think-of-the-children way that national politics tends to be reported. It is still obviously covered.
Not that this additional way of making laws isn't a double edged sword. A common European market is in my view a great idea and it is very clear that laws are necessary to implement such a market, treaties alone won't do. But there is always the danger that the EU tries to do too much or that battles against bad legislation have to be fought again and again.
If password verbatim is required, well, game over, the law will be shot down in record time. If, on the other hand, merely access to the account is required, that's just a small feature to be implemented -- ``allow accounts of authorities authenticating as any plain user without users' passwords'' (which is still terribly bad, open to abuse etc.).
In any case, the law (as reported in the article) sounds like a failure of democracy to me -- not something one wants his representative to vote for.
I hope that's really the case.
Well, if it comes to pass it will only last a year or so until the french government realises that every single server in the country has been savagely violated by every enterprising blackhat on the planet. It will start to become a game for bored script kiddies. I can see them on IRC now, "dude, you wanna go root some frenchies?"
Bah.
It seems like a data retention arms race is in progress.
Crazy.
What people should be concerned about is the impact this will have on online anonymity, which this law is actually a direct threat to.
So, upon receiving a request for this you could generate a random password and give that to them (as well as set the user account to this password). They have no way of proving that this isn't their password :)
The law seems ill-conceived at best. In the best case, it will require every french site to implement a workaround. I'd be willing to bet a great many will simply comply with the law and compromise everyone's security.
Yes, that should be the one linked in the topic.
Google, can you take one for the team? Thanks.