This thread is frustrating. Everyone seems more interested in nitpicking the specifics of what OP is saying and are ignoring that a forum sends you your password (not an automatically generated one) in an email on registration.
Larian stated on their forum they fixed this behavior and shifted to https 3 years ago. When this was linked several times in thread, people asked OP when this screenshot occured, and OP ignored the questions. Pretty clear that this is a very old screenshot of what is now a non issue.
What’s to discuss besides OP trying to stir up drama about issues that were resolved years ago?
Are you saying that the parent poster is giving incorrect information?
Yes. mosiacmango’s comment repeated what others had already said (right down to specific words that I used in the original thread and here), and then jumped to this conclusion:
Pretty clear that this is a very old screenshot of what is now a non issue.
Everything about that statement is false. While the circumstances made it seem likely that the screenshot was old, it was not clearly so, and in fact, it turns out the issue is still present. I checked it. A registration email from the test I ran yesterday looked just like the screenshot in question, cleartext password and all.
Given that Larian reported the issue fixed three years ago, it’s possible that they fixed it locally and some time later upgraded to a new version of the forum software, thereby overwriting the local fix. Perhaps mosiacmango should have considered that before posting incorrect speculation as if it were fact.
I think the OP of that post would have had a better reception if they had:
Responsibly disclosed what they found, rather than using it to stir up drama on social media.
Mentioned that it’s just a web forum account, not connected to game accounts or anything else of value.
Targeted the software vendor (www.ubbcentral.com) instead of picking on one particular customer who used that software.
Refrained from spreading misconceptions and unfounded assumptions about how the technology works.
Responded to the reasonable follow-up questions, such as those that came when readers discovered that the problem was reported fixed three years ago.
People in that thread responded with skepticism and criticism to an irresponsible, misdirected, misleading, alarmist mess of a post. That’s hardly surprising.
Everyone seems more interested in nitpicking the specifics of what OP is saying
Yep. That’s how security works. You have to nitpick the specifics.
The reality is nobody has invented a perfectly secure authentication system that is easy to use (for example, allows easy recovery when people forget their password which for any large service will be tens of millions of times per day).
Attempts have been made - passkeys being the latest one - but they’re not even remotely easy to use as soon as you step slightly out of the most common path (such as using the web browser that is provided by the company you’re logged in with… try to use Chrome with an Apple passkey, or Safari with a Google passkey, and you’re going to stumble into usability issues).
Passwords are not considered secure wether they’re sent in a plaintext email or not. They can be secure, if used properly, but 99% of users don’t follow best practices. As a result almost every web service in the world is insecure and it’s the nitpicky details that matter.
Sending a secret to an email address is a standard step during registration for almost any service.
But the thing is that you should never have access to the plaintext password and thus you should never be able to receive it in an email. You should store the salted hash of the password instead of the password itself.
These kind of forums don’t store the plaintext password, they send an email while in memory, and hash them afterwards. Still bad security, but it’s not storing it in plaintext.
But your password should never reach the server. It should be hashed already at the client and then salted at the server with a random hash. Then you store the salted hash
But you are supposed to change that generated password as soon as you use it to login. Now I have no idea about these forums, but you’d expect the software to enforce that need to change
It’s still stupid because people reuse password. They shouldn’t, but they do. If it’s one time login, make it a token. There’s zero reason to ever email a password, period
When I say “nitpicking the specifics” I mean OP is saying things like the password should never be unencrypted in memory in the same comment as mentioning things like the password in plaintext in the email and folks are more interested in browbeating over the first thing rather than acknowledging the second as a problem. I see this behavior far too often in tech spaces online. People are often more concerned with being pedantic and technically correct than anything else.
The person you’re responding to is doing the exact same thing you are complaining about, and finished their comment with something obviously wrong. They are not arguing in good faith
Uh, I seem to recall this happening when I made a Larian account. What happens is you give them your email, they make your account, and email you a temporary password. The temp password is shown in plaintext, as the email shows. Once I saw the email, I logged in to finalize my account and change my password to something secure. It’s not the most modern process, but I wasn’t really that concerned either.
The number of people accepting email for some magic thing without in-between mechanisms is ridiculous. If it's sent in an email you should 100% consider it to be stored in plaintext in multiple places. There is incredible amount of machinery between your mail() call and the end user reading that email, on both the sending and receiving end. For example, my spam filter (rspamd) will likely store a copy of it for a while, and that's not unique to it.
What's in the database is not really relevant. Only the worst instance of storage counts.
it does not mean the passwords were stored in plaintext
This is debatable. Yes, there is a chance the email is being generated and sent on the fly, before the password is stored. But in situations like this there is a much larger chance it’s being stored in plain text.
Reversible hashed password storage isn’t meaningfully better than clear text.
The key to reverse the hash is typically (necessarily) stored in the same infrastructure as the password. Bad actors with access to one have access to the combination.
Even if an attacker fails to exfiltrate the key to the reversible hash, it’s typically only a matter of days at the most before they can reverse engineer it, and produce plain text copies of every password they obtained the hash of.
A reversible hash provides a paper thin layer of protection against accidental disclosure. A one way hash is widely considered the bare minimum for password storage.
Anyone claiming a password has been protected, and then being able to produce the original password, is justly subject to ridicule in security communities.
Edited to add the /s for clarity, because the NIST recommended remediation in 2023 for emailing a password is “burn everything down and pretend the organization never existed”. /s
Again, adding that /s since that’s not actually what NIST says to do, and I am, at best, paraphrasing.
Why wouldn’t it be generated and sent immediately? If someone has the inclination to do this type of thing, they probably also want to do things synchronously and immediately.
Because one egregious decision normally begets another.
Look at it this way, if you walk into a pizza joint and there are roaches wandering around on the walls, is it not more likely the food is also unsafe to eat?
Yes, this could just be one horrible decision, but this decision shows you where the mind of the developer/team was when thinking through their security.
You actually agree with me more than you disagree. If they have the mentality to send out clear text passwords, they probably don’t hage the natural talent to design an asynchronous system.
Also if they store a copy of that email they’re effectively storing the password in plaintext even if they e properly made a salty hash brown for the database.
OP of that thread was talking about how (they think) the password was stored in plain text instead of this “tree” you’re talking about. The discussion on that was not a nitpick.
I mean, there were a lot of forests in that thread. Like how it was an old screenshot and they don’t do those emails anymore. Or you shouldn’t re-use passwords anyways. I don’t blame people for missing 1 or 2 forests.
If you’re following proper security procedures you wouldn’t be using the same password for anything else, so they are overly concerned about the wrong things while parading being top notch security wise while not doing it themselves.
Yeah it’s an issue, but only an issue if you’ve set yourself up to be vulnerable.
I agree. Unfortunately many folks who are attracted to security issues and topics don't have a great holistic view of things. The idea of security is that something can go wrong and you are still ok, and that you apply context appropriate measures. Of course sending a password through email isn't good, but it's a gaming forum. A security conscious individual should have randomly generated passwords for everything and no reuse. Likewise, it wasn't a bank or a security company, it was an old forum software for public discussions, so contextually this isn't a top concern.
The cherry on top is that it appears to have been an old screenshot and already addressed.
Its weird how there seems to be a group dedicated to creating and subsequently reporting on imagined faults within Larian. There have been a few articles and now that guy who used an out of date screenshot to make an unfounded claim.
They aren't perfect, and there are a fair number of things issues in BG3.
Like that it has a number of the same issues as their previous game, Divinity Original Sin 2. Suggesting that they didn't see those issues as issues, or didn't see a need to change their process to correct them.
Everyone seems more interested in nitpicking the specifics of what OP is saying and are ignoring that a forum sends you your password (not an automatically generated one) in an email on registration.
I see it as a non issue because Larian has a previous post up, in a timeframe window of acceptable lack of visible action, about them finding a solution to that problem.
If nothing has been announced in a month or so, then it starts becoming a problem again.
It’s criticism directed at a service provider, not users. Service providers should assume users reuse passwords. Security is about protecting everyone.
Than direct it at the service provider? Oh wait it got fixed a while ago.
Also where does their liability stop? Should they also just assume everyone is compromised? Where does the users onus come into play? I guess they shouldn’t send password resets than, since they should assume that their email is compromised already….
Yeah that’s actually a terrible idea if they must assume that they must protect everyone. Sorry can’t reset your password your email must be compromised.
This is slippery slope bullshit and you know it. I’m not saying providers should have to magically prevent anything. I’m only saying they shouldn’t send you your password in an email. Crazy take, I know.
Also, with regards to it already being fixed or not, when I made this thread I hadn’t seen anything about that in the other thread. I’m more just annoyed that people want to dunk on people with supposed gotchas while acting like sending a password in an email is okay somehow.
No it’s not slippery slope in this case, it’s what you’re suggesting and why it’s utter bullshit. But yes of course that’s the obvious defense to take there.
You’re not only saying that, you said that they need account for everything. Two totally different things. Can’t have X and not have Y.
Sending a password is okay in quite a few scenarios, you’re talking to broad again her. Also, maybe make sure you know the story before jumping on as well…? You’re making the issues worse not better.
This was hashed out pretty thoroughly in that thread.
The initial concern over the password being stored in plaintext was shown to be a mistaken assumption, and it was made clear that this kind of email doesn’t happen anymore, it’s an outdated problem.
No need to keep the discussion going past that, is there? Much less spread it around?
Sending passwords via email Will compromise any passwords sent via email. Regardless if the password is stored anywhere in the process if the password is sent via email it is compromised and no longer safe to use. Email is not end and encrypted you have no idea who’s running the mail exchange servers that your email follows, it’s entirely possible for this company to store that password in a log dealing with their email servers. Password sent via email should be considered immediately compromised and any sites following a practice like this should not be trusted with standard passwords which you shouldn’t be using anyway.
Right, and everyone agreed that wasn’t the greatest practice. Two years ago.
This thread from two days ago was bringing attention to an issue that was fixed two years ago, and calling it out as if it was a different problem than it was.
It’s good to have discussions about security best practices, but this thread is pointless. This problem is simply not there anymore.
Email isn’t end to end encrypted but, but it generally is encrypted. The people who will have it are the sender (who already have the password since they created it) and whoever runs the recipient’s mail server. Which is hopefully someone the recipient trusts.
From the sounds of it, this was a password that the server randomly generated, so it’s never been used before, and you are forced to reset the password as soon as you use it, so it’ll never be used again and they do treat it as “immediately compromised”.
Hardly state of the art security, but it also doesn’t really have any major problems… especially since this is for a forum.
Sending passwords via email Will compromise any passwords sent via email.
100%. But that is a different problem and a different attack vector than storing passwords in plain text for authentication. When reporting security issues, it’s important to be precise.
The only issue I can see is why are you sending the password to the person in the email at all just seems redundant… I think I may have run into a tree though.
A sad truth and sadly not uncommon. Some people seem to get a kick out of showing of how much “smarter” they are than the next person, side tracking the whole conversation in the process. I really don’t get why someone would think that’s called for.
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