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That's a pretty bad misreading of the situation. There's nothing in the law, as far as I know, outlawing hashed passwords-- just that the passwords need to be

That's a pretty bad misreading of the situation. There's nothing in the law, as far as I know, outlawing hashed passwords-- just that the passwords need to be able to be handed over to the proper authorities upon request. A hashed password should work just fine, as long as law enforcement can use that to gain access to the system. In short: there's plenty of reasons to be against this law without constructing new outrages.

JoachimSchipper 16y ago
Are you really sure that hashed passwords are not outlawed? They're pretty specific about handing over passwords instead of having, for instance, a "police-only" password that gives access to every account.
- ernesth 16y ago
  Directly from the law, «Les données mentionnées aux 3° et 4° ne doivent être conservées que dans la mesure où les personnes les collectent habituellement.» The password (as well as full name, postal address, pseudonym, phone number) only needs to be kept if it is collected. So you must keep the password (and be able to give it upon request) only in the case you already store it.
JonnieCache 16y ago
You cannot gain access to a system with the hashed passwords, unless you modified the system to accept them. In that case you could just modify the system to not require a password at all. In fact, that is in a sense what you would be doing anyway. It does outlaw hashed passwords in practice. EDIT: as others have pointed out, you could simply store the plaintext passwords in another file with greater security, and have hashed ones in the DB. An even better option would be simply to get the hell out of france. Or, start a consulting business in france to help people comply with this, and rake it in.
- praptak 16y ago
  It strongly depends on the wording of the law and on the usual million things that affects how laws are interpreted. Maybe just providing a freshly generated password that gives access to the account in question is enough to satisfy this law?
- tlrobinson 16y ago
  Couldn't you simply change the app to accept the password hashed or unhashed? e.x. change ... WHERE user.password = hash(input) to ... WHERE user.password = hash(input) OR user.password = input Or was your point that this would eliminate the benefits of using an adaptive hash like bcrypt to slow down brute forcing?
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    Yes, but this would mean you were storing the unhashed passwords in the DB. When your DB is compromised, everyone's password is exposed, likely along with their email. In this world of frequent password reuse, that is pretty much game over.
    - verysimple 16y ago
      I don't know why your answer was downvoted, you are spot on.
      - mattmanser 16y ago
        No he's absolutely not, there's a massive difference between having someone's password that's been reused on X number of sites and having a hashed version of a password that's only valid on one site. Also if you wanted to make it secure you could restrict hash passwords to work only from certain IP addresses so you either have to be using a company internal machine or say the IP addresses from a police station.
        JonnieCache 16y ago
gokhan 16y ago
How will they be able to login with the hash without modifying the application? If that's the case, they'll also be able modify (or force to author to modify) the system to login without the password, so it's irrelevant to request the password.
cmontgomeryb 16y ago
But law enforcement _wouldn't_ be able to use the hashed password to gain access to the system, would they? Otherwise there would be no advantage to hashing over storing plaintext. Am I misunderstanding you?
EwanToo 16y ago
I agree this law doesn't seem to outlaw hashed passwords, it simply means that you need to store 2 copies of the password - one hashed, and one in plain text. It's totally legal to store the hashed value with your live database as normal to provide authentication, and store the plain text version in a write only file on a separate system to try and give some additional level of security. This isn't a great solution, but it does provide hashed passwords for regular work, and plain text for when the police ask for it. It's obviously a pretty stupid law, but to say it "outlaws" hashed passwords is just nonsense.
- IDisposableHero 16y ago
  I agree this law doesn't seem to outlaw hashed passwords, it simply means that you need to store 2 copies of the password - one hashed, and one in plain text. You are splitting hairs. It outlaws passwords where only the (salted) hash and not the plaintext is stored, which is the whole point of what's commonly known as "hashed passwords". store the hashed value with your live database ... and store the plain text version in ... a separate system Call that seperate system "the moneypot". I'm tempted to suggest that people just try that and see how that works out for them, given the inevitablity of failures of security and vigilance. But for the sake of the rest of us, let's not.
  - EwanToo 16y ago
    I didn't say it was a smart law, but I'm also not splitting hairs. If someone has that level of control over your system to access a write only file on a separate secured system, make a copy and extract it somewhere else, they probably also have enough access to insert a piece of code into your authentication system to dump all the plaintext passwords to a separate file as people login over time. The message remains the same for all users regardless of this law - Don't reuse passwords, you can't trust their security.
    - IDisposableHero 16y ago
      I'll be more specific about failures of security and vigilance: "separate secured system" aren't always as seperate and secured as they should be. Assume that all computers can connect to the internet these days unless specifically configured otherwise, and data gets copied, and copies get left lying around. e.g. the classic "left the laptop on a train" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-new-batch-of-terror-files-left-on-train-847451.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-new-... / "cd got lost in the mail" problem.
yannickmahe 16y ago
Couldn't you, in theory, keep hashed passwords, but in case of a request comply by saying: "Ok, we will give you the passwords, but our passwords recovery process will take over X years while we brute force it" ?
- fizx 16y ago
  In general, the law frowns upon the sort of pedantic cleverness geeks love.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    As usual munroe has been here before: http://xkcd.com/538/ http://xkcd.com/538/ XKCD really is the geek equivalent of quoting scripture. Lessons for living.
  - wladimir 16y ago
    Isn't being a lawyer basically about "pedantic cleverness"? Regarding the details of the law, of course, instead of technical details. But I've always found law extrememly pedantic. Writing laws and contracts, in a way, seems like trying to make secure software. One has to define everything, and evaluate all possible "attack angles".

JoachimSchipper 16y ago

Are you really sure that hashed passwords are not outlawed? They're pretty specific about handing over passwords instead of having, for instance, a "police-only" password that gives access to every account.

ernesth 16y ago
Directly from the law, «Les données mentionnées aux 3° et 4° ne doivent être conservées que dans la mesure où les personnes les collectent habituellement.» The password (as well as full name, postal address, pseudonym, phone number) only needs to be kept if it is collected. So you must keep the password (and be able to give it upon request) only in the case you already store it.

JonnieCache 16y ago

You cannot gain access to a system with the hashed passwords, unless you modified the system to accept them. In that case you could just modify the system to not require a password at all. In fact, that is in a sense what you would be doing anyway. It does outlaw hashed passwords in practice. EDIT: as others have pointed out, you could simply store the plaintext passwords in another file with greater security, and have hashed ones in the DB. An even better option would be simply to get the hell out of france. Or, start a consulting business in france to help people comply with this, and rake it in.

praptak 16y ago
It strongly depends on the wording of the law and on the usual million things that affects how laws are interpreted. Maybe just providing a freshly generated password that gives access to the account in question is enough to satisfy this law?
tlrobinson 16y ago
Couldn't you simply change the app to accept the password hashed or unhashed? e.x. change ... WHERE user.password = hash(input) to ... WHERE user.password = hash(input) OR user.password = input Or was your point that this would eliminate the benefits of using an adaptive hash like bcrypt to slow down brute forcing?
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  Yes, but this would mean you were storing the unhashed passwords in the DB. When your DB is compromised, everyone's password is exposed, likely along with their email. In this world of frequent password reuse, that is pretty much game over.
  - verysimple 16y ago
    I don't know why your answer was downvoted, you are spot on.
    - mattmanser 16y ago
      No he's absolutely not, there's a massive difference between having someone's password that's been reused on X number of sites and having a hashed version of a password that's only valid on one site. Also if you wanted to make it secure you could restrict hash passwords to work only from certain IP addresses so you either have to be using a company internal machine or say the IP addresses from a police station.
      - JonnieCache 16y ago

gokhan 16y ago

How will they be able to login with the hash without modifying the application? If that's the case, they'll also be able modify (or force to author to modify) the system to login without the password, so it's irrelevant to request the password.

cmontgomeryb 16y ago

But law enforcement _wouldn't_ be able to use the hashed password to gain access to the system, would they? Otherwise there would be no advantage to hashing over storing plaintext. Am I misunderstanding you?

EwanToo 16y ago

I agree this law doesn't seem to outlaw hashed passwords, it simply means that you need to store 2 copies of the password - one hashed, and one in plain text. It's totally legal to store the hashed value with your live database as normal to provide authentication, and store the plain text version in a write only file on a separate system to try and give some additional level of security. This isn't a great solution, but it does provide hashed passwords for regular work, and plain text for when the police ask for it. It's obviously a pretty stupid law, but to say it "outlaws" hashed passwords is just nonsense.

IDisposableHero 16y ago
I agree this law doesn't seem to outlaw hashed passwords, it simply means that you need to store 2 copies of the password - one hashed, and one in plain text. You are splitting hairs. It outlaws passwords where only the (salted) hash and not the plaintext is stored, which is the whole point of what's commonly known as "hashed passwords". store the hashed value with your live database ... and store the plain text version in ... a separate system Call that seperate system "the moneypot". I'm tempted to suggest that people just try that and see how that works out for them, given the inevitablity of failures of security and vigilance. But for the sake of the rest of us, let's not.
- EwanToo 16y ago
  I didn't say it was a smart law, but I'm also not splitting hairs. If someone has that level of control over your system to access a write only file on a separate secured system, make a copy and extract it somewhere else, they probably also have enough access to insert a piece of code into your authentication system to dump all the plaintext passwords to a separate file as people login over time. The message remains the same for all users regardless of this law - Don't reuse passwords, you can't trust their security.
  - IDisposableHero 16y ago
    I'll be more specific about failures of security and vigilance: "separate secured system" aren't always as seperate and secured as they should be. Assume that all computers can connect to the internet these days unless specifically configured otherwise, and data gets copied, and copies get left lying around. e.g. the classic "left the laptop on a train" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-new-batch-of-terror-files-left-on-train-847451.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-new-... / "cd got lost in the mail" problem.

yannickmahe 16y ago

Couldn't you, in theory, keep hashed passwords, but in case of a request comply by saying: "Ok, we will give you the passwords, but our passwords recovery process will take over X years while we brute force it" ?

fizx 16y ago
In general, the law frowns upon the sort of pedantic cleverness geeks love.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  As usual munroe has been here before: http://xkcd.com/538/ http://xkcd.com/538/ XKCD really is the geek equivalent of quoting scripture. Lessons for living.
- wladimir 16y ago
  Isn't being a lawyer basically about "pedantic cleverness"? Regarding the details of the law, of course, instead of technical details. But I've always found law extrememly pedantic. Writing laws and contracts, in a way, seems like trying to make secure software. One has to define everything, and evaluate all possible "attack angles".