Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives
Re: Brute force credentials protection
From: Brad Judy <brad.judy () CU EDU>
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2019 18:28:30 +0000
While I generally agree with the article’s notes and Randy’s thoughts (with that big caveat about regulations), I am going to be cheeky and rephrase one of Randy’s items (because I know him well enough to give him a hard time)… “Account lockouts encourage DOS attacks … We haven’t been hit by such an attack in 20 years.” I hear the concern over account DOS attacks noted regularly, but I also last saw one around 2001. And that one wasn’t really intentional, it was the side-effect of poorly coded Windows worm malware. In terms of business interruption, I think accident account DOS fits into high likelihood with low impact (because it’s one user at a time) and intentional account DOS probably fits into low likelihood with high impact. Is it a potential vector for disruption? Sure. But how much should it factor into the risk balance discussion for this topic? I’m not sure. Brad Judy Information Security Officer Office of Information Security University of Colorado 1800 Grant Street, Suite 300 Denver, CO 80203 Office: (303) 860-4293 Fax: (303) 860-4302 www.cu.edu<http://www.cu.edu/> [cu-logo_fl] From: EDUCAUSE Listserv <SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU> on behalf of randy <marchany () VT EDU> Reply-To: EDUCAUSE Listserv <SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU> Date: Tuesday, March 5, 2019 at 11:17 AM To: EDUCAUSE Listserv <SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU> Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Brute force credentials protection If you have strong password requirements, log failures/success and aren't bound by a specific regulation/law, IMHO, disable account lockouts. Why? IMHO, 1. Account lockouts are a 45 year solution to password guessing. In those days, Unix didn't have any password strength mechanisms. Later, tools like npasswd, passwd+ provided that capability and not until ~1992 with IBM's AIX 3.1 did any Unix system come with builtin password strength settings. Times have changed. 2. Strong password requirements, MFA, logging are more than adequate to deal with brute force attacks. 3. Account lockouts encourage DOS attacks by simply scripting multiple logins with dumb passwords. The goal, of course, is not to get access to your account but to deny you access to your account. This is nothing new. We were hit with such an attack in 1999 which forced to drive to the data center to deal with the issue. 4. Do you notify the offending site that you're being brute forced from them? While this can be tedious, it's also good neighbor policy. Of course, if a reg/law requires you to keep lockouts enabled, nothing you can do about that. Don't create a worse problem than the one you were trying to solve. :-) Just my .02. Randy Marchany VA Tech IT Security Office and Lab On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 1:05 PM Mike Dronen <mike.dronen () minnetonkaschools org<mailto:mike.dronen () minnetonkaschools org>> wrote: Phil's article was quite interesting - we'll be discussing it at our weekly security meeting. While we've not had significant account lock-out issues in our environment - combined with our password policy it makes sense to slightly increase our failed attempt number...then again.... As for a perimeter tool, interesting as well - though it seems in EDU (student curiosity) we are protecting assets as much from the outside as the inside. I really appreciate all the insights!
Current thread:
- Brute force credentials protection Mike Dronen (Mar 04)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection Maud, Phil (Mar 05)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection Laverty, Patrick (Mar 05)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection Dexter Caldwell (Mar 05)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Brute force credentials protection Mike Dronen (Mar 05)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection randy (Mar 05)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection Brad Judy (Mar 05)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection Tom Horton (Mar 05)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection Greg Williams (Mar 06)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection randy (Mar 05)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection Francisco Chavez (Mar 05)
- Re: Brute force credentials protection Maud, Phil (Mar 05)