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"people are distinguishing between extreme vs people trying to do their jobs" Those things are in no way exclusive. Storing passwords in plaintext is awful pra

by untog 8y ago

"people are distinguishing between extreme vs people trying to do their jobs" Those things are in no way exclusive. Storing passwords in plaintext is awful practise. Including the contents of form submissions in logging is a similarly awful practise. I really don't see what the difference is.

munk-a 8y ago
I like logging and at our company we blanket log all GET parameters on every request, similarly I think it's a Good Idea™ to never log POST parameters, but there are some pages where we've started logging some whitelisted ones because they can help diagnose some errors we run across, but, in an environment where all data is coming into the server in JSON blobs attached in request bodies then it can be a bit harder to make any sort of blanket whitelist.
ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
Earlier in the thread: >Because there's two types of storing passwords in plain text. There's the "your password is stored in plaintext in the database" way which everyone agrees is 10 different kinds of stupid, and then there's the "we accidentally logged the body of all requests that went through this system, and it turns out login requests came through here" kind. Basically the conscious decision to store passwords in plain text is worse than unintentionally doing so in logs. One is purposeful, one is not. Yes it's bad, but it's not as bad as if it was done on purpose. And generally, this how most laws are enforced or implemented.
- untog 8y ago
  Can't both be attributed to ignorance? You could store passwords in plaintext in a database because you didn't know better. You can store plaintext passwords in logs because you don't know better. If I store passwords in plaintext am I being purposeful or am I being ignorant of best practises? I think people are drawing a distinction where one doesn't really exist.
  - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
    >You can store plaintext passwords in logs because you don't know better. This whole conversation is about how it likely was not done on purpose, and that it was the result of logging HTTP requests and responses. If they wrote logger.info(password), yea I'd say that's as outrageous.

by untog 8y ago

munk-a 8y ago

I like logging and at our company we blanket log all GET parameters on every request, similarly I think it's a Good Idea™ to never log POST parameters, but there are some pages where we've started logging some whitelisted ones because they can help diagnose some errors we run across, but, in an environment where all data is coming into the server in JSON blobs attached in request bodies then it can be a bit harder to make any sort of blanket whitelist.

ApolloFortyNine 8y ago

Earlier in the thread: >Because there's two types of storing passwords in plain text. There's the "your password is stored in plaintext in the database" way which everyone agrees is 10 different kinds of stupid, and then there's the "we accidentally logged the body of all requests that went through this system, and it turns out login requests came through here" kind. Basically the conscious decision to store passwords in plain text is worse than unintentionally doing so in logs. One is purposeful, one is not. Yes it's bad, but it's not as bad as if it was done on purpose. And generally, this how most laws are enforced or implemented.

untog 8y ago
Can't both be attributed to ignorance? You could store passwords in plaintext in a database because you didn't know better. You can store plaintext passwords in logs because you don't know better. If I store passwords in plaintext am I being purposeful or am I being ignorant of best practises? I think people are drawing a distinction where one doesn't really exist.
- ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
  >You can store plaintext passwords in logs because you don't know better. This whole conversation is about how it likely was not done on purpose, and that it was the result of logging HTTP requests and responses. If they wrote logger.info(password), yea I'd say that's as outrageous.