Masked passwords must go
'Shoulder surfing is largely a phantom problem'
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Websites should stop masking passwords as users type because it does not improve security and makes websites harder to use, according to two of the technology world's leading thinkers.
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen and security expert Bruce Schneier both think websites should stop blanking out passwords as users type them in. They say the practice inconveniences users and delivers no security benefits.
Most websites that require passwords allow a user to see the login name as it is typed in but replace the password with dots or asterisks as it is typed, so that the password cannot be viewed either by another person looking at the screen or by the user.
"It's time to show most passwords in clear text as users type them," said Nielsen in a post on his website. "Providing feedback and visualizing the system's status have always been among the most basic usability principles. Showing undifferentiated bullets while users enter complex codes definitely fails to comply."
Nielsen is the web's most famous usability guru and campaigns for content and websites to conform to technical standards to be usable and accessible for all users, including disabled users using assistive technologies.
Schneier, a renowned IT security expert, echoed Nielsen's concerns, and supported Nielsen's assertion that password masking does nothing to improve security.
"Password masking has annoyed me for years," Schneier told OUT-LAW.COM. "Shoulder surfing is largely a phantom problem, and people know to be alert when others are nearby, but mistyping a long password happens all the time."
Double degradation
Nielsen said that research had shown that password masking causes problems for users. "Password masking has proven to be a particularly nasty usability problem in our testing of mobile devices, where typing is difficult and typos are common. But the problem exists for desktop users as well," he said.
Preventing users from seeing the passwords they type in causes two problems, according to Nielsen. "Users make more errors when they can't see what they're typing while filling in a form. They therefore feel less confident. This double degradation of the user experience means that people are more likely to give up and never log in to your site at all, leading to lost business," he said.
"The more uncertain users feel about typing passwords, the more likely they are to (a) employ overly simple passwords and/or (b) copy-paste passwords from a file on their computer. Both behaviors lead to a true loss of security," he said.
Schneier agreed that masking passwords was likely to result in a weakening of security. "I'm sure people choose shorter and easier to type password when their typing is masked, resulting in less security overall," he said.
Nielsen said that sites usually blank out type-in passwords out of force of habit rather than reason. "Password masking has become common for no reasons other than (a) it's easy to do, and (b) it was the default in the web's early days," he said.
He acknowledged that shoulder surfing is a risk in some environments, such as internet cafés. "It's therefore worth offering them a checkbox to have their passwords masked; for high-risk applications, such as bank accounts, you might even check this box by default," he suggests. "In cases where there's a tension between security and usability, sometimes security should win."
See also
Nielsen's Alertbox on password masking
Bruce Schneier's blog
Copyright © 2009, OUT-LAW.com
OUT-LAW.COM is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons.
COMMENTS
One thing I find more dangerous than masked passwords
Username/Password pages with an onload method to set the focus to the username.
Nothing more annoying than typing your username, getting to the password field and then realising that the focus has been shifted back to the username box because you didn't wait for the 15mb+ login page to load completely and you're typing your password into the username box in cleartext for anyone around you to see.
Virgin Media's webmail used to/probably still does this along with quite a few other sites.
No No No and again No!
bearing in mind, most people reuse the same password for pretty much everything, the chnace are, if someone see then typing in their say, work password, it could well be the same as their banking one, their email one etc etc etc.
The real problem is inconstancy. Where
thisismypassword
may be ok on one site, it may have to be
Thisismypassword
on a another
another it may need to be
Thisismypassw0rd
on another and
Th!sIsmypaswordbuttheoldoneistoshort&^%$£
on another.
And another may say No to & \ / @ _ or -'s
We need constancy more than clear type.
Seriously?
OK, im gonna stick with everyone else and say this is a bad idea.
why?
anyone entering a password in any major organisation will have plenty of people to read off their screen, and office politics can mean that even friends can get malicious. then there is the fact that most IT security departments are more than capable of ghosting someones screen and reading their passwords.
on top of that, just using something like dameware you can remotely view someones screen over the internet(potentially) and there are plenty of viruses around that incorporate a screencap into their bag of tricks.
so yes, due to masked passwords, shoulder surfing may be *something* of a non issue, but you cant always tell when someone is watching your screen in any other way.
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