Once you have the SHA1 function, you can query the API my making a GET request to Luckily, the site offers a free JavaScript implementation of this function with a wonderful open-source license. First, the script needs to generate an SHA1 hash of the password to send to the API. The ImplementationĪlthough it may seem simple at first, there are actually a few steps required to implement a security check like this. With a little JavaScript, you can implement this in a password security check, without using any server resources of your own. Have I Been Pwned not only allows someone to visit their site and check if their password was found in a data breach, but it also offers a free endpoint where you can send the first few characters of a hashed version of the password, and it will return a list of passwords matching that prefix, along with the frequency of the passwords in data breaches. However, that list could be huge (for example, one I found was, when compressed, over 10 gigabytes.Įnter the beautiful free API site Have I Been Pwned. Another option someone might try to implement is to download a list of common passwords, and compare the generated password to each of them. If you tell someone that their password is already in use, they could try that password with other email addresses or usernames to break into some unsuspecting user’s account. However, as you hopefully noticed, that would be a huge security issue. So, how can we do better? Can we make a password strength requirement that accounts for commonly used passwords? A first (bad) approach might be to compare passwords with other passwords on the system, because hey, if two people have the same password, it’s probably not a good password. To a simple password strength checker, these passwords seem equally strong. Notice, though, that each of those examples follows the same pattern - one capital letter, a symbol, some lowercase letters, a number, and two more letters. For example, is a common password, so guessing that would be more likely to break into an account than something like “W&gsu2ir”. But neither of these account for another common type of attack, a dictionary attack.Ī dictionary attack, or rainbow table attack, uses passwords found in data breaches to try to break into an account. And having numbers and/or symbols increases the possible characters, which also makes it hard to brute-force. The length requirement makes a lot of sense - every extra character is hundreds of extra possible combinations, and extending the length of the password makes it exponentially hard to brute-force. Now, I’m not saying those are bad requirements (though they sure can be annoying sometimes, especially if you’re using a method like my word-based password generator). Ya know, those pesky requirements for “at least 8 characters” and “please include a number of symbol” and so on. Last week I was learning about password security, and it got me thinking about password security checks on sites. Wondering how to implement the perfect JavaScript password strength checker? Stay tuned for a working implementation, or to use the open-source one I created. But, with the proper tools, a developer can take the site to the next level by checking against common passwords found in breaches. Your Password Are Weak - Make Them Better With JavaScript Is your password weak? Probably, especially if you are just trying to meet the password requirements on a site.
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