Re: Storing password in cookie

On Sat, April 9, 2005 1:37 pm, Skippy said: > On Sat, 09 Apr 2005 14:51:49 -0400 trlists@clayst.com wrote: >> A digression to a related issue (where I did take the conservative >> approach): A system I'm working on now was originally set up with >> password hashes in the database -- the PW itself was never stored. But >> the client wanted an "email me my password" feature so we had to >> encrypt and store the PW. Of course if someone had access to the >> database they'd get a lot of other stuff probably more useful than PWs >> so I don't worry about this too much. But I would rather have used the >> hash. > > You could've changed the password for them to something random, mail it > to them and keep the hash in the database. You could also use a not-as-random "nice" password generator where the user gets something like: 'babarebo' (Baa Baa Ree Bo) instead of: 'UJVHY' for a password. There are a bunch of them "out there" with varying degrees of Security value. Some are not-so-good as the possible number of supposedly random combinations is TOO LOW. For sure, storing passwords in clear-text in your database is a BAD IDEA. Far too many people will use their same password for your site as something important, and there you go leaking it to the world! No matter how unimportant *your* password protection might be, it's too risky to store them in plain-text. -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm