On Jul 29, 2015, at 2:51 PM, Nathan Duehr <denverpi...@me.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Jul 28, 2015, at 5:46 PM, Warren Young <w...@etr-usa.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The Apple ID password rules are a fair bit stronger than the libpwquality 
>> rules we’ve been discussing here, and have been so for some time:
> 
> Disingenuous. It does not REQUIRE you to use your AppleID as the user 
> password, and it’s probably not a good practice anyway.

I don’t see how you got any requirement from my post.  I pointed out that it 
was only a “want” in the post you quoted.  I’m not trying to obscure anything, 
just pointing out that other OSes are in fact already moving toward 
libpwquality-like restrictions.

Windows 8+ makes bypassing the cloud login even more difficult than Apple does, 
and Chrome OS doesn’t even offer the option.

iOS requires a cloud login now on hard boots.  It allows a short PIN for 
unlocking a device that is only sleeping, but the equivalent of that in CentOS 
would be a separate password on the X screensaver, which really isn’t on-point 
here. 

I assume Android does this now, too.  (Haven’t used Android myself since 2.3.)

The important point is that there’s a clear trend here.  The fact that you can 
currently bypass the cloud login in some of these cases does not invalidate 
that point.

> Using it as an example is silly, in that it LOWERS security.


Really?

As others have already pointed out in this thread, the local-only password 
policy on these OSes is far weaker than the rules proposed for F23.  Human 
nature and the contents of this thread should tell you how many people will use 
stronger local passwords than these cloud services demand.

You may point out that the move to a cloud authentication system extends the 
attack surface out into the public Internet, but when you implement a public 
login service using strong security — as it appears that Apple, Google, and 
Microsoft have done — it’s still a net win.

As I have already pointed out, a 9-character purely-random password can survive 
a million years of constant pounding with reasonable rate limiting.  Given that 
Microsoft, Apple, and Google all do more than just rate limiting on their cloud 
login systems, that means that even a relatively short but random password will 
survive any sustained frontal attack.

Offline attacks are far more dangerous, but strong mitigations for those have 
been well-known for decades.  I assume that Google, Apple and Microsoft are 
using these techniques to defeat offline attacks, in case their secure password 
stores are ever compromised.  (Key derivation, salting, hashing, zero-knowledge 
proofs...)

I am not wholeheartedly in favor of these cloud login systems, nor am I arguing 
that CentOS 8 should have one, too.  I am only pointing out that the security 
features they’ve all been designed with are worth emulation in CentOS’s 
local-only password authentication system, too.

> Comparing CentOS (an OS quite often used on servers on well-protected 
> networks) 

CentOS should not require a well-protected network in order to be secure.  It 
should be secure in its own right, from the moment it first boots after 
installation.

Anyway, your premise that your CentOS boxes are on networks so well protected 
that you don’t need strong passwords is quite unsound:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority#CA_compromise
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_SecurID#March_2011_system_compromise

I doubt your LAN is more secure than that of RSA, Iran’s nuclear program, and 
several CAs.

Security professionals do not rely solely on borders to secure individual 
systems.  They rely on defense in depth, a concept at least as old as the 
ancient Greek phalanx formation:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx
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