Why do so many companies and people say that your password has to be so long and complicated, just to have restrictions?

I am in the process of changing some passwords (I have peen pwnd and it’s the password I use for use-less-er sites) and suddenly they say “password may contain a maximum of 15 characters“… I mean, 15 is long but it’s nothing for a password manager.

And then there’s the problem with special characters like äàáâæãåā ñ ī o ė ß ÿ ç just to name a few, or some even won’t let you type a [space] in them. Why is that? Is it bad programming? Or just a symptom of copy-pasta?

  • kevincox
    2·
    1 year ago

    This means that the submitted hash is effectively a password. You get a minor benefit in that it obscures the original password in case it contains sensitive info or is reused. But the DB is now storing the hash password in plain text. This means that if the DB leaks anyone can just log in by sending the hash.

    If you want to do something like this you would need some sort of challenge to prevent replay attacks.

    This scheme would also benefit from some salt. Although the included username does act as a form of weak salt.