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TfL requires in-person password resets for 30,000 employees after hack
(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
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Cybersecurity
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But why in-person? Surely the priority should be resetting passwords quickly, and doing it in-person is far from quick.
A password has nothing to do with validating your identity, it's merely about authentication. Authentication and authorization are completely separate concepts. They should be resetting authentication to limit chance that an outside attacker can use compromised credentials, and then perhaps re-verifying identities separately for people with access to critical systems first.
Resetting passwords in-person sounds terrible. I use a password manager, so I would be more likely to make a bad password than a good one if I have to do it in front of someone in an interview.
Authentication (n):
Computing
the process or action of verifying the identity of a user or process.
Eh, it's about validating credentials match the records of the user account, it's not about validating that the person using those credentials is who they say they are. In other words, it doesn't mean "the person logging in is John Smith," it means "the person logging in has John Smith's credentials." If you want to prove that the user is who they say they are, you'll need a lot more than a password (biometrics are a start).
I imagine this process is more about ensuring the employee is the one entering the new password, rather than the malicious actor - which would easily be possible if a simple password reset email was sent out.
I guess that's possible, but then that user would be locked out of their account and they'd quickly figure out whose account was compromised when the employee can't access things anymore.