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Perhaps the idea of monitoring the number of failed authentications and placing both an alert when the rate goes over a certain threshold and when it goes under
by brown9-2 15y ago
Perhaps the idea of monitoring the number of failed authentications and placing both an alert when the rate goes over a certain threshold and when it goes under a certain threshold doesn't seem so apparent until after the fact.
Might be a huge lesson here to learn for other services to monitor their authentication system in both directions.
- tptacek 15y agoThis is a fantastic idea.
- bryanallen22 15y agoBetter yet, basic unit tests that verify passed and failed authentication of test accounts. They should run before and after each code deploy (among other unit tests). It's very disconcerting that they don't seem to be doing this.
- tptacek 15y agoUnit tests are a good thing, but could miss problems that crop up only in production; for instance, if they delegated authentication to another server, or if something got deployed out-of-process.
- brown9-2 15y agoI don't like to be pedantic but code that tests multiple components and how they interact together aren't really "unit tests" anymore since they are testing more than one unit - it's pretty reasonable to assume that an authentication system is comprised of many modules / classes / etc.
- bryanallen22 15y agoGood point. It still shouldn't even be possible to deploy without some basic sanity tests. I'd put authentication very high on that list.
- zacharypinter 15y agoThis reaffirms my belief that integration/functional tests give far more bang-for-the-buck than unit tests for deployed applications, though each have their respective merits.
- mikle 15y agoThis is not an either or scenario. Both test different things and should be written. I don't want to criticize DB since god knows everyone makes stupid mistakes, but this finally convinced me that I will never pay them for their service and that I should encrypt ALL data in that folder (instead of just the sensitive data, which is what I do now).