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Given the time it's been since deprecated, I'm assuming most older versions of Windows since 2000 and Samba have long since supported more secure options... though from some comments even the more secure options are relatively weak by today's standards as well.

Aside: still hate working in orgs where you have a password reset multiple times a year... I tend to use some relatively long passphrases, if not the strongest possible... (ex: "ThisHasMyNewPassphrase%#23") I just need to be able to remember it through the first weekend each time I change without forgetting the phrase I used.

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Depending on your organization, it can sometimes help to point the right compliance person to the latest NIST guidelines, specifically:

https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/sp800-63b.html#passwordver

> Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT require subscribers to change passwords periodically. However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence that the authenticator has been compromised.

One of the nice cases where it can be helpful that standards themselves, which you can point to, have said to stop doing that.

Unfortunately, not all guidelines have caught up. PCI-DSS still requires password changes every 90 days for anything in scope (the cardholder data environment, anything that might even remotely touch payment card data).

Not with MFA. Not for a while now. And regardless, the word(s) you are looking for is "compensating control".

Yeah, I've gotten headway in this in other places I've worked... heavy advocate for the only requirement being a minimum length with the recommendation to use a "phrase" as well as not requiring rotation in terms of less than a year at a time if at all... though not strictly matching NIST, some ops find a never require change hard to swallow.

I wrote an authentication platform used by a few govt agencies. The irony is all my defaults match NIST guidelines (including haveibeenpwned lookup on password set/change), but needed to support the typical overrides for other hard requirements that tend to come from such agencies in practice.

>> Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT require subscribers to change passwords periodically. However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence that the authenticator has been compromised.

> though not strictly matching NIST, some ops find a never require change hard to swallow.

I think they're right about that. A scheduled change just represents the accumulating probability that there's been a compromise somewhere that didn't come to your attention.

It seems like it would make more sense for a scheduled change to affect all passwords at once, though.

There has to be some balance though, as requiring change too frequently encourages the use of insecure but easy to remember passwords, or password that are very similar to the previous one thus failing the purpose of the change (e.g. a password containing the year, and the employee only changes the year every time). Best would be pushing for the use of a password manager or auth tokens like Yubikeys.

On changes, as I've mentioned in other threads, I don't think once a year is too bad... also, I'm an advocate of SSO as much as possible with a strong MFA (ideally push selection) option for work orgs. It reduces friction and can actually improve overall security if appropriately managed... that said, building internal apps that have appropriate application access is often harder still in these environments.

> point the right compliance person to the latest NIST guidelines

This only works if that's the only standard they're adhering to. At my employer, the password changes are mandated by their "cyber insurance" policy which hasn't caught up with the times.

I had to help a friend with a small business through a "cyber insurance" policy compliance questionnaire once and it was an incredible exercise in frustration. I would have felt certain the policy was a scam if it wasn't being mandated by a real insurance company the small business did other policies through. The questions didn't seem to have been written by someone with technical experience. Many of the questions wanted Yes/No binary answers for things that are complex technically. Some of the questions led to good discussions about security improvements for a small business, but most of them seemed "cargo culted" from large enterprises without real application to a small business.

That did not leave me a strong impression of "cyber insurance policies". I suppose it also did leave me wondering how much we've left very small businesses behind in security as a culture.

I got to work one morning recently, got a message that our MDM required me to change my password, logged into the MDM, turned off that obsolete option, and announced to the company via Slack that we're not doing that anymore.

Every now and again I ponder if I'm happy where I'm at careerwise, and then something like this reminds me that I have the authority to make these decisions, and I decide that yeah, I like being me.

Fine until you run into the filter that prevents the new password from having any of the same substrings longer than some limit compared to the old one.

Which means that they're storing your password in plaintext somewhere.

No, because you have to submit the old one along with the new one.

I don't think AD is capable of this natively.

IMHO there are two requirements for a good password:

1. It must be hard for a computer to guess.

2. It must be easy for a human to remember. If you can not set a secure password and then remember it a week later it is a bad password.

This is why I really hate overly strict password requirements that make it hard to remember. These cause people to write it down or do things that appease the password checker but don't make it harder to guess.

3. Saved in a password manager

That replaces number two and is the correct alternative in most cases.

There are cases where a password manager may not solve the problem, though. It doesn't help if I forget my disk encryption or work AD password and I need to be able to login before I can get to the password manager in the first place. Enterprise IT is also where you find some of those frustrating password policies, such as long and complex passwords with mandated changes every month or two, and where you usually can't choose your management tools.

Of course those particular passwords usually get typed so often that remembering them isn't much of a problem. And password managers work well for pretty much all secrets that aren't needed that often.

Until you need to login some place and don't have access to your password manager.

Yeah. I've been in the habit of keeping the (encrypted) password file in multiple places. So I can even get the password off my phone if I really need to.

Although: be careful of cloud solutions

I mean this is what I use 1password for.

If it's the IT managed computer login then you couldn't use a password manager for it, right?

I think this is more the realm of using windows hello or apple touchid (AFAIK no good, simple, standard built-in way exists for linux distros) to get the first OS login and then you can use your password manager when you are logged into the OS.

ok fine, two passwords then

Hardware MFA is available for logins, including Linux.

What method/program are you talking about? Does it support FDE? Is it reasonably supported with the methods expected by end users (fingerprint, face, smartcard, etc.)?

Everytime I've tried its been finicky and had to use non-standard tools to get it working.

I'm a different commenter but yeah, solutions exist. For example systemd-cryptenroll let's you use a FIDO token (or TPM or PKCS#11 smartcard) to unlock your encrypted disk and it's very easy to set up. Quite literally a single command.

Windows Hello serves the same purpose for Windows, though I'm sure there are caveats/differences.

If it's a fido hardware token you still need to make sure you have a backup token. It's a lot simpler on windows/macos where you can use biometrics for the same purpose.

You can setup multiple keys. It would be crazy not to include a simple ascii hash key in addition.

I look it up on my phone 1password and type it in manually

I tend to never use my password manager for my primary OS logins for desktops/laptops I physically access. Fortunately, I rarely have to keep more than 5 or so memorized at a time (including my password manager, Bitwarden/Vaultwarden).

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