Is it possible to safely check for certain characters in a password? - eviltoast

Basic cyber security says that passwords should be encrypted and hashed, so that even the company storing them doesn’t know what the password is. (When you log in, the site performs the same encrypting and hashing steps and compares the results) Otherwise if they are hacked, the attackers get access to all the passwords.

I’ve noticed a few companies ask for specific characters of my password to prove who I am (eg enter the 2nd and 9th character)

Is there any secure way that this could be happening? Or are the companies storing my password in plain text?

  • Kissaki@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    OP asked about validating specific characters of the password. Commenter then said it has to be stored in plain text for that to work. Then you commented about client-side validation. Which I really don’t see has anything to do with the stuff before in this thread?

    Commenter said it has to be plain text server side. You implied validating client side would allow storing hashed passwords and still validating individual characters of the password. Which I asked how that would work. Your answer to that seems to give a general view of password handling on forms and validation?