I am very curious to know some of the points regarding registration and login related points as a developer points of view. Please see below the steps for any online account which is publicly open for all,
CREATE USER ACCOUNT : Insert the data entered by user along with a column activate which default value is 0
SEND A LINK TO ACTIVATE : a link has been sent to user email at the time of registration
ACTIVATE THE ACCOUNT : user clicks over the link and the link is verified and update the column 'activate' with value 1
Why to sent a link & verifying is necessary which I supposed that is not utmost required. I asked to clients why u want such verification and i get the answer almost same e.g. checking the authenticity of the user and it'd be helpful to stop the duplicity of the user.
but practically at the time of user login, i suppose it is useless to verify each time the activate column along with password for every user.
I would appreciate if u explain the points which is very important regarding my concern.
This is really a slippery slope, but there are reasons. Obviously spam users will try to create accounts as quickly as possible, for spam reasons. Email and captcha verification will handle this.
Another is the issue of clumsy or accident-prone users that will forget their passwords, which can be worked around by email reminders/resets. Sadly, users may try to add fake email addresses(or mistyped ones) and lose access to their accounts, requiring admin intervention. Simple verification can force users to get their account into a self-rescuable state before adding any data.
Related
From the documentation I could find out that only upon first login into my app, the users name and email will be returned with the credential. So i go ahead and save these to my backend.
Now if the user decides to delete his account, I delete all his data from my backend (thats propably what the user wants me to do. And isnt that what i have to do anyway according to some privacy laws or what not?).
Now if the user ever decides to change his mind another time and install the app, will i not be able to fetch username and email? No matter what i do? Or did I miss some kind of user.ultimateSignoutAndDelete(for: .ever) to be able to fetch userdata on his next sign in?
Maybe this scenario seems a bit constructed but when testing apple-sign-in you stumble upon that immediately.
Once you delete a Firebase Auth account, there is no way to recover any information from that account. All links between the user and your projects are gone. The user will have to create a new account.
Is it safe to login user automatically after registration?
User fills registration form, some info message is sent to his mailbox, and what then:
User redirected to login page asking him for credentials;
OR
User auto-logins as his newly created user?
I feel something not safe enough in auto-login, but can't figure it out!
If they just filled out the login information and you're not concerned about confirming that the email address is legit, then there shouldn't be a problem just logging them in directly.
However, you open yourself up to people/bots creating bogus accounts (at least ones without legitimate email addresses). If you're concerned about that (not sure it this is a public facing app or intranet, etc) then you should at least verify the email address by sending a link with a guid or some identifier that you can track back. Then you can let them log-in once they are confirmed.
You could also just tie it to their StackExchange/Facebook/OpenID/etc account and not make users fill out yet another form and worry about maintaining all that information.
They should need to login. Also the confirmation email should not contain their password. If they managed to give you the wrong email address and you automatically log them in then someone else has access to their account now. This holds even if you have them type their email address twice. Sometimes people make the same mistake twice in a row.
It can be safe to auto login if the user already has an active session as the correct user during the confirmation step. If you think about it, it's not actually "automatically logging them in" but simply keeping them logged in as they was before.
User registers
Keep a session identifying the user
User navigates to the confirmation page (linked in email)
You activate the account
During all that time, there was no reason to end the session. The only reason you would want to end the session (or not create one in the first place) is if your permissions are not properly set to allow someone to login / create a session without giving them higher privileges than an unregistered user.
Now, be sure not to automatically identify the user as X simply because this person navigated to the confirmation page of user X. If a user navigates to this page but does not already have a session open, do not assume he knows the password.
We are building a CRM type app although this would apply to any application where there are "members" and "staff" e.g. a shopping site, dating site, facebook etc.
In our app, users can change their password the usual way, by resetting it with email confirmation. Users can also have more than one email address associated with their account.
What we are trying to work out is how to prevent staff using the system taking over the accounts. We want staff to be able to edit the email address (because someone may phone in and request a change); the issue then is they can simply change the email to one they control - and request a password re-set as a user.
Are there any recommended best practices for this?
You could require the user to also authenticate the action by other means, such as when the email address is changed the user is sent a confirmation code via text message that they must input somewhere.
Another means would be to only allow access to the account if certain information is inputted correctly. This could be address information or DOB. It is unlikely that this information could be guessed from something like a name or account number.
1) Add one of those silly security questions like "What is your favorite color?" and store the answer, encrypted, in the database. Staff could edit the email to their heart's content, but if they didn't know the answer to the secret question the system wouldn't let them change the password. If you have concerns about staff trustworthiness, then you need to introduce something outside their control that serves as a final gateway before you can change the user account.
I imagine a simple implementation would simply check to see if the user reset their password. If so, on login, it challenges them with the security question to "authenticate" them before allowing them to proceed.
2) Logging, monitoring, and auditing. Record which staff accounts accessed the email address change form, what address(es) they changed, what they changed them too, and when they changed them. Also record the connection information of the people accessing the accounts. If your logs show one IP address accessing 4-5 completely disparate accounts, you might need to look into that. (Yes, I know you can use proxies etc. to mask this. Not perfect but it'd weed out the chaff pretty fast).
3) Hire trustworthy people! #2 should really only need to be used as a "check" against abuse instead of the end all be all to stop it.
I'm looking to add password-reset functionality to my site and have been browsing the numerous threads discussing various aspects of that issue here on SO. One thing I haven't really seen clarified is how much information to require from the user for confirmation before sending out the reset email.
is email alone enough?
email + account username?
email + account username + some other identifying value all accounts must input?
I don't want my site to seem like an old wrinkly nun with a ruler, but I don't want people to be able to abuse the password reset system willy-nilly.
Suggestions?
I use just an email and send an email to that person with an activation code in a link. That activation code expires within 2 days and once it gets uses it also is invalidated.
This means the person has to have access to that email account in order for it to work, and it can only be used once.
It is not uncommon to use the email + account username, but my email IS what you sign in with, there are no usernames. The decision is up to you.
I think email is enough without it becoming a nuisance.
First concern should be security. How bad would it if another person got a hold of a user's password? If this is unacceptable, I'd say what Babiker said - email and a security question of some sort, preferably something that's never communicated between the site and the user, with the exception of sign-up process or a security settings edit by the user. The assumption here is that the user's email account has been compromised.
If security is not a huge deal, i.e. there are no real privacy/financial/etc risks involved, I think email is enough. To minimize risk for nuisance, you could do what Kerry suggested - i.e. not reset the password automatically, but provide a verification link. Also, you might want to place some restrictions on how frequently the feature can be used by a given user to prevent someone from filling your inbox by repeatedly entering your email.
Email
Some other identifying value all accounts must input. Like a security question.
I'm wondering what the best method is for creating a forgot password function on a website. I have seen quite a few out there, here are a few or combination of:
passphrase question / answer (1 or more)
send email with new password
on screen give new password
confirmation through email: must click link to get new password
page requiring user to enter a new password
What combination or additional steps would you add to a forgot password function? I'm wondering about how they request the new password and how they end up getting it.
I'm operating on the principal that the password cannot be retrieved; a new password must be given/generated.
Edit I like what Cory said about not displaying if the username exists, but I'm wondering what to display instead. I'm thinking half the problem is that the user forgot which email address they used, which displaying some sort of "does not exist" message is useful. Any solutions?
I personally would send an email with a link to a short term page that lets them set a new password. Make the page name some kind of UID.
If that does not appeal to you, then sending them a new password and forcing them to change it on first access would do as well.
Option 1 is far easier.
A few important security concerns:
A passphrase question / answer actually lowers security since it typically becomes the weakest link in the process. It's often easier to guess someone's answer than it is a password - particularly if questions aren't carefully chosen.
Assuming emails operate as the username in your system (which is generally recommended for a variety of reasons), the response to a password reset request shouldn't indicate whether a valid account was found. It should simply state that a password request email has been sent to the address provided. Why? A response indicating that an email does/doesn't exist allows a hacker to harvest a list of user accounts by submitting multiple password requests (typically via an HTTP proxy like burp suite) and noting whether the email is found. To protect from login harvesting you must assure no login/auth related functions provide any indication of when a valid user's email has been entered on a login/pass reset form.
For more background, checkout the Web Application Hackers Handbook. It's an excellent read on creating secure authentication models.
EDIT: Regarding the question in your edit - I'd suggest:
"A password request email has been
sent to the address you provided. If
an email doesn't arrive shortly,
please check your spam folder. If no
email arrives, then no account exists
with the email you provided."
There's a trade-off being made here between ease of use and security. You have to balance this based on context - is security important enough to you and your users to justify this inconvenience?
Send email with new password.
FORCE a password change when they arrive and key in the new password.
This ensures that the person who wanted the password will be the only only getting in to the account.
If the email is sniffed, someone could get in to the account (of course), but the real party will discover this immediately (as their password you just sent them doesn't work).
Also send confirmations of password changes to the users.
If someone get the new password, and then an email saying "thanx for changing the password", they're going to be rather puzzled and will talk to an admin if they didn't do it.
Using the email verification/password reset link will give you better security.
If you look around this is how most websites do it and people are pretty used to this verification, so I'd recommend using this type of authentication.
I would think (gbrandt's) Option 2 would be a great method if it is combined with some personal information you already have for the user. i.e date of birth.
When the user requests a new password (reset) via entering his email address, he also has to enter a correct date of birth (or something else) before the password is reset and a new one is emailed to the user.
Only those who know him well can possibly annoy him by resetting his password! It cant be a stranger or a bot
Upon 5 or 7 bad email-address & date of birth combinations the user is emailed that his password has been requested to be reset and has failed due to an incorrect credential. Then password resetting for that account is suspended for 24hrs or any desired period.
(if too many users contact the webadmin regarding this email he'll know someone is trying to maliciously attain information from your website/app)
What do you guys think?
Option 1. is not a good idea, as generally his becomes easily guessable by others. Sarah Palin's personal email (Yahoo I think) was hacked in this way by a third party.
The other options are better and previous posts have outlined the detail.
The idea I was thinking about was to sign the data in the link that is sent to the user. Then, when the user clicks the link and the server receives the call, the server also gets the encrypted part and can validate that the data was untouched.
I have implemented a JAVA project for this use case. It is on GitHub, open source. It answers your question perfectly... implemented in Java.
As for the link in the email - it generates the link, plus validates it upon usage.
There are explanation for everything (and if something is missing - let me know...)
Have a look: https://github.com/OhadR/Authentication-Flows
See a Demo here.
This is the client web-app that uses the auth-flows, with the README with all explanations. it directs you the implementation: https://github.com/OhadR/authentication-flows/tree/master/authentication-flows