Slightly dramatic, slashdot style, but it's an extremely disturbing development nonetheless. Especially considering data retention has already been ruled as being unconstitutional in a bunch of EU countries.
> I suspect the OP did not verify the exact wording. The law requires retention of (among other things) "mot de passe ou données permettant de le vérifier ou de le modifie" (password or data to verify it or change it) so it seems that it would be enough to store the password hash and/or do a password reset when demanded by the law enforcement guys.
In addition to that the decree is not so much about data retention but about what gets transmitted to law enforcement. About the passwords, it also specifies that you don't have to store anything extra, which at least to me doesn't mean you have to suddenly store everything in plain text. Sad to see so much misinformation...
So it's all tempest in a teapot, like so many "scandalous" things that land on HN these days... Being able to change a user's password is quite normal.
French politics simply does not understand the internet. And they are uninterested in privacy or security. They "lost it" in my eyes with their LOPPSI internet filtering laws (which they heavily promoted with nonsense about child sex offenders) [1]
This law (in general) is going from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Although I consider myself a Francophile I have to say that the Sarkozy government really seems to be out of control these days, of course the same is true here in Austria as well as in Germany.
We need common sense & neutral specialists in control. This world is clearly becoming far too complex for the electable caste.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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" ?
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.
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?
If this ridiculous law goes into effect, and I were to operate a service in France, I'd still keep the hashed passwords in the database.
Then log the plaintext passwords to a different file, encrypted with a public key. The corresponding private key would live on a separate machine (without internet access), and would only be used in cases where it's inevitable.
One of the benefits of being in the EU is that there is a higher authority than the government who can overturn stuff like that. I'm not a legal expert, but seeing as how the latest constitutionnal questions in France went, I'm pretty sure this decree will not stand.
The EU's ability to intervene into local politics is not as direct as you think. Every EU law needs to be signed by individual countries before it's valid in there. Only after the law is signed and the countries break it, can they be held accountable by the EU. So if the EU was to act, it would have to pass a law (which will go in effect in a few years), then get France to sign it, and later sue them.
Everyone seems to be overlooking the privacy issues here.
The main problem for me would be that even after I delete my account on some website they will still keep all of my data for one year.
The basic question is, does the law require giving authorities the password verbatim, or rather, giving them access to account's data (perhaps including fake authentication as the user, but without use of user's password)? There may well be mis-understanding in the early reporting.
If password verbatim is required, well, game over, the law will be shot down in record time. If, on the other hand, merely access to the account is required, that's just a small feature to be implemented -- ``allow accounts of authorities authenticating as any plain user without users' passwords'' (which is still terribly bad, open to abuse etc.).
In any case, the law (as reported in the article) sounds like a failure of democracy to me -- not something one wants his representative to vote for.
I think a lot of us have been feeling that for a while. This only adds to it.
Well, if it comes to pass it will only last a year or so until the french government realises that every single server in the country has been savagely violated by every enterprising blackhat on the planet. It will start to become a game for bored script kiddies. I can see them on IRC now, "dude, you wanna go root some frenchies?"
I think every European with half a brain is very much ashamed of having anything to do with Europe. The EU advocates privacy on the one hand, and then slaps you in the face with data retention & sends all your financial transactions over to the US without any guarantees of privacy or confidentiality. It claims to be a democratic entity, but as soon as someone disagrees The Commission rears its ugly head and tells you to buzz off.
This law basically says that if you do e-commerce, you better not have your service hosted in France. If you're not hosted in France, you might as well not pay any taxes in the country. Nice playing french government, genius move.
So that would mean that using ready-made software that uses proper hashing (Simple Machines Forum comes to mind) would become illegal in France.. Interesting times.
Then they can't do anything. This law is of abysmal stupidity but everything coming from Sarkozy is made of the same stuff: publicity stunt and utter nonsense.
I'm sorry but this reaction is just stupid and based on wild speculation. I'll bet you $100 right now that France will not prosecute anyone for using hashed password.
What people should be concerned about is the impact this will have on online anonymity, which this law is actually a direct threat to.
I guess the intent behind this law is to make it easy to get to the other accounts on different services that a user might have due to people using the same password for lots of things.
So, upon receiving a request for this you could generate a random password and give that to them (as well as set the user account to this password). They have no way of proving that this isn't their password :)
Does it really say you cannot at all store hashed passwords, or does it mean just that you have to give the authorities the password for a user account if they ask you to? After all, if they want a password that can access a user's account, they could get that but that doesn't mean that it has to be the exact same password that the user uses, does it?
How would you implement that? The law requires you be able to give police the user's password, upon request. How would you do that without storing the password in plaintext, somewhere?
The law seems ill-conceived at best. In the best case, it will require every french site to implement a workaround. I'd be willing to bet a great many will simply comply with the law and compromise everyone's security.
France has a long history of security-limiting policies. I don't know if it is still in effect, but at one point in the 90s, they did not allow software to have better than 40-bit encryption. In turn, American software companies had to write French-only versions of their products of they wanted to sell to French customers.
[+] [-] drdaeman|15 years ago|reply
> I suspect the OP did not verify the exact wording. The law requires retention of (among other things) "mot de passe ou données permettant de le vérifier ou de le modifie" (password or data to verify it or change it) so it seems that it would be enough to store the password hash and/or do a password reset when demanded by the law enforcement guys.
[+] [-] tonfa|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joelhaasnoot|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dansingerman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErrantX|15 years ago|reply
This law (in general) is going from the sublime to the ridiculous.
1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country#...
[+] [-] hoggle|15 years ago|reply
We need common sense & neutral specialists in control. This world is clearly becoming far too complex for the electable caste.
[+] [-] michael_dorfman|15 years ago|reply
In short: there's plenty of reasons to be against this law without constructing new outrages.
[+] [-] JonnieCache|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] EwanToo|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] JoachimSchipper|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yannickmahe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gokhan|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmontgomeryb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perlgeek|15 years ago|reply
Then log the plaintext passwords to a different file, encrypted with a public key. The corresponding private key would live on a separate machine (without internet access), and would only be used in cases where it's inevitable.
[+] [-] burgerbrain|15 years ago|reply
Wrap it up nicely if you must, say you've lost the key or something, but the important thing is that you don't lay down to fools.
[+] [-] eru|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yannickmahe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tyrannosaurs|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ckuehne|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] photophotoplasm|15 years ago|reply
Hopefully it all works out for Europe but I hope to God my country never goes down that route.
[+] [-] thecabinet|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piaskal|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonnieCache|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dexen|15 years ago|reply
If password verbatim is required, well, game over, the law will be shot down in record time. If, on the other hand, merely access to the account is required, that's just a small feature to be implemented -- ``allow accounts of authorities authenticating as any plain user without users' passwords'' (which is still terribly bad, open to abuse etc.).
In any case, the law (as reported in the article) sounds like a failure of democracy to me -- not something one wants his representative to vote for.
[+] [-] perlgeek|15 years ago|reply
I hope that's really the case.
[+] [-] wladimir|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonnieCache|15 years ago|reply
Well, if it comes to pass it will only last a year or so until the french government realises that every single server in the country has been savagely violated by every enterprising blackhat on the planet. It will start to become a game for bored script kiddies. I can see them on IRC now, "dude, you wanna go root some frenchies?"
[+] [-] Tharkun|15 years ago|reply
Bah.
[+] [-] verysimple|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dabeeeenster|15 years ago|reply
Crazy.
[+] [-] rmjb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexandros|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gokhan|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wazoox|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ig1|15 years ago|reply
What people should be concerned about is the impact this will have on online anonymity, which this law is actually a direct threat to.
[+] [-] evanlong|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geuis|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinhowe|15 years ago|reply
So, upon receiving a request for this you could generate a random password and give that to them (as well as set the user account to this password). They have no way of proving that this isn't their password :)
[+] [-] snes|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skalpelis|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redthrowaway|15 years ago|reply
The law seems ill-conceived at best. In the best case, it will require every french site to implement a workaround. I'd be willing to bet a great many will simply comply with the law and compromise everyone's security.
[+] [-] synnik|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ichilton|15 years ago|reply