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OK, so what are you proposing then? * That all applications that run unattended store the user's service password? * That the user change the app passwor

OK, so what are you proposing then? * That all applications that run unattended store the user's service password? * That the user change the app password on the 2 desktops and 3 tabs/phones they use because they rotated their service password? * That users should NOT be able to revoke or change an application's access rights without changing their password? * That applications *shouldn't* request the minimum privileges they need to do their job? * That it is NOT a good thing for a user to be able to log into their service provider and check what applications are connected with the service? You're thinking in an extremely binary and absolutist fashion. Systems have lots of failure modes. > If you compromise somebody's desktop or phone... This is my day job. After compromise, the first thing is the "smash and grab" where you loot as many credentials as possible off the machine with a bunch of scripts. If there's stuff in a browser's built-in password manager, win. If your app stores a password, win. You're assuming that all failure modes are alike.

pifflesnort 14y ago
> You're thinking in an extremely binary and absolutist fashion. Systems have lots of failure modes. You seem to be thinking of applications as if they were web sites. > After compromise, the first thing is the "smash and grab" where you loot as many credentials as possible off the machine with a bunch of scripts. If there's stuff in a browser's built-in password manager, win. If your app stores a password, win. So they smash and grab the keychain, which holds the master passwords to the services granting OAuth tokens. You might have me vaguely convinced if you were advocating for XAuth+OAuth, in which case it would provide a bare modicum of additional security without negatively impacting user-experience at all.
- xyzzy123 14y ago
  Thanks! I hadn't run into xAuth before. It looks like a reasonable way to make the grant process not such a Desktop UI cluster$%$^ - which I totally agree that it is. Re: the keychain thing, again, it depends on the level of compromise, whether the machine is unlocked, what platform you're on and whether the creds are in there. And yes, with enough access you can keylog, man-in-the-browser or "desktop phish", but it's higher risk for the attacker and requires maintaining longer-term access. But if your app stores passwords the user instantly loses. Failure modes matter. A kind of parody version of how I see your argument is: "Sites shouldn't bother hashing passwords, because an attacker with a shell could just modify the site's login process to capture passwords".

pifflesnort 14y ago

> You're thinking in an extremely binary and absolutist fashion. Systems have lots of failure modes. You seem to be thinking of applications as if they were web sites. > After compromise, the first thing is the "smash and grab" where you loot as many credentials as possible off the machine with a bunch of scripts. If there's stuff in a browser's built-in password manager, win. If your app stores a password, win. So they smash and grab the keychain, which holds the master passwords to the services granting OAuth tokens. You might have me vaguely convinced if you were advocating for XAuth+OAuth, in which case it would provide a bare modicum of additional security without negatively impacting user-experience at all.

xyzzy123 14y ago
Thanks! I hadn't run into xAuth before. It looks like a reasonable way to make the grant process not such a Desktop UI cluster$%$^ - which I totally agree that it is. Re: the keychain thing, again, it depends on the level of compromise, whether the machine is unlocked, what platform you're on and whether the creds are in there. And yes, with enough access you can keylog, man-in-the-browser or "desktop phish", but it's higher risk for the attacker and requires maintaining longer-term access. But if your app stores passwords the user instantly loses. Failure modes matter. A kind of parody version of how I see your argument is: "Sites shouldn't bother hashing passwords, because an attacker with a shell could just modify the site's login process to capture passwords".