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Discussion on: User Authentication, In 2020

 
ajkachnic profile image
Andrew

For DID.app specifically, they are implementing OpenId Connect which is an identity layer, on top of OAuth2. As for in practice, DID.app sort of has a demo, when hit you "Get Started".

It is all a very seamless experience. I'm sure if you have concerns with them storing the logins, that you could build your own password-less solution using this protocol.

And because of the way password-less works, I don't think rating limiting would be an issue. The code for me to sign in was valid for 15 minutes and was 28 characters within a char-set of 52 (uppercase and lowercase letters). The possible combinations within that keyspace is 1.1171040382915234e+48. You'd need over a trillion guesses a second to crack that code.

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ghost profile image
Ghost

Sorry about the pestering, maybe my questions need it's own discussion post. :)

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ajkachnic profile image
Andrew

It's okay. I think that there is nothing wrong with password security, and brute-force protection works very well. But, random passwords are still more secure. Even though they aren't necessary currently, it is always helpful to be one step ahead.

Either way, the security isn't the main focus. It's just a benefit of using it. I think the main benefit of password-less authentication is a much improved user experience

 
ghost profile image
Ghost

oh no, I misspoke, I meant, what is the problem of passwords being shorter if you can limit the number of requests in your API, so what if a password lives in a smaller random space if, as a malicious attacker you can only check 1 each second?, the goal is not to have more possible permutation, the goal is that it takes a long time, having a lot of permutations is the only choice for offline encryption because you can't control how fast an attacker can check, but with a live system you can, you just need to restrict the attempts, in number of tries or time between them.

I also wonder why or if I should force users to have certain degree of security, why can't a user be able to have an unsafe passwords?, if it will only affect themselves I think is their choice, not mine. Now, if that user could affect others, like someone with an admin permissions, of course, you may want to force them, but what if I don't care about my emails or YT, why should I be forced to have a long password, are Google gonna check if I have my passwords in post-its in my monitor?, check that I haven't give them to anyone? why should they care?.