- From: John Kemp <john.kemp@nokia.com>
- Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:27:57 -0400
- To: "ext Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress" <rden@loc.gov>
- CC: elharo@metalab.unc.edu, noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com, Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>, David Orchard <orchard@pacificspirit.com>, www-tag@w3.org
ext Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress wrote: > From: "Elliotte Harold" <elharo@metalab.unc.edu> >> I now think >> the only reasonable answer is that clear text passwords are never >> acceptable. Full stop. Any suggestion that they might be acceptable in >> some circumstances is irresponsible. We need to bite the bullet and >> accept that. > > I haven't been a part of this discussion, but I have to weigh in: I just > think this is simply not true and to assert that it is seems misleading. > Clearly, *clearly*, there are cases where you have to send a password in the > clear and there isn't any way around it. The example that comes to mind is > when the service tells you what password to use, and everyone uses that > password. The password might be "password". (The service doesn't care that > everyone in the world can access it, but it is configured to require a > password.) By a password, I think we are talking about some secret piece of information shared between one party and another, and intended to be kept secret between those two parties. If, by "password", we *do* mean some piece of information intended to remain secret, and intended to be shared between just two parties (not more) then I think it should be required (or recommended, should it not be possible to require it) that the shared secret is not sent, or (even better) stored, in cleartext. Of course, I do recognize that this is aspirational, and also that people may have a looser interpretation of the term "password" than I do. Regards, - johnk
Received on Thursday, 9 October 2008 16:53:56 UTC