Subject: authmeth - add security consideration for passwords in the clear?

From: "Roger Harrison" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 07:49:17 -0600

> Roger Harrison wrote:
> 
> Section 6.2 - I guess this is the best we can do, but returning 
> confidentialityRequired is a bit like closing the barn gate after the

> horses have already left. I.e., the user's password has already gone

> over the wire in the clear. I don't know if this is the appropriate 
> place to make policy recommendations, but it might make sense to 
> recommend that if the correct password was given, it be 
> flagged/expired/invalidated and the user forced to set a new password

> upon authenticating successfully with proper protections in place. (I

> suppose it is inappropriate for this doc, since the LDAP password
policy 
> mechanism is still a work in progress?)
 
This seems like a reasonable concern.  I'm wondering if a little more
detail in this security consideration might be warranted. Suggested
wording:
 
The server returns a resultCode of confidentialityRequired for the
operation (i.e. name/password Bind with password value, SASL Bind
transmitting a password value in the clear, add or modify including a
userPassword value, etc.), even if the password value is correct. 
Server implementations may also want to provide policy mechanisms to
invalidate or otherwise protect accounts in situations where a server
detects that a correct password for an account has been transmitted in
the clear.
 
Comments?

> -- 
>    -- Howard Chu
>    Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com 
>    Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc 
>    OpenLDAP Core Team            http://www.openldap.org/project/
 
Roger Harrison
Novell, Inc.