I have a database with 2k+ users and I want to send them their own passwords, but mass email it to them. The mass emailing can be done several ways, but the question is how to do it so each user gets his/her own unique password?
The user password is stored inside a field within a MySQL DB. And so does the email adress.
Appreciate any ideas.
I want to send them their own passwords
NOOOOOO please don't
Seee e.g. the Password policy hall of shame:
Storing passwords in PLAIN TEXT is NOT SAFE.
It's time to make online services clean up their act!
Also: plaintextoffenders.com - "Did you just email me back my own password?!"
Sending clear-text passwords via E-Mail is considered a really, really bad practice. Passwords should be hashed; all users should be able to get through E-Mail is a link to reset it.
To answer your question though, you'd have to walk through each record, and send a custom E-Mail to each customer. That can be resource intensive, and/or bring down the machine if there's too many messages at once, so you'd have to wait in between sending each bunch. You could also use a 3rd party service like MailChimp.
Whats wrong with this approach (pseudo-code):
$result = sql_query ("SELECT id, email, username, password FROM users"); // get all users
$mailer = new SomeMailer();
while ($row = sql_fetch_row($result)) {
$mailer->AddRecipient($row['email']);
$mailer->AddBody("Hey, here is you pass LOL: " . $row['password']);
$mail->Send();
}
That is how you can do it generally, I'd advise you to take Pekka's advice seriously though. Sending passwords in plain-text is a big no-no.
Well, I found the most flexible and easiest way to get this done is by using MailMerge inside MS WORD and then send out the messages.
Microsoft Word --> Mailings
You have to extract the required data fields from the db and save them as an MS Excell file.
Related
Probably a stupid question, but I need to ask anyway.
I'm working on a research, which involves emailing fake phishing emails to participants.
At the beginning, I would have a database of email addresses.
Because of ethical considerations, I would like somehow to hash the email addresses in a way, that later they would not be recoverable even if I want to.
For example:
I want to send an email to
john.doe#mail.com
The email would lead to a page, where I would collect some data (when was it visited, what did he did on the page), so basically I would store email address and its actions in a database.
I could store the hash of the email address in this database, so in the end I wouldn't have his address, but the problem is at a later stage I will need to email him a second time, and record those actions as well...
Now the problem is:
If I hash his email address and store it this way in the database, a
simple re-hash of the original database would reveal the recipient.
If I hash his email with a random salt, I could not link his old and
new actions together.
I need to be able to tell honestly that there
is no way I can link real email addresses and real people to the
database entries. (I just need the results anyway)
No, you can't keep the email address usable and also make it impossible to recover it. If you need to be able to decode/recover the email address to send an email at a later date, then there's no way to make it unrecoverable. That's a contradiction in terms. You would need to do something like use a third party to create per-user tokens, but then the third party would need to store the token and the email. There's no avoiding it: someone has to store the email.
The best solution is just to encrypt any sensitive data, including personally identifiable information (PII). If you want to be hyper-paranoid about it, you could throw away the key at the end of your project. But you have to keep it in the meantime, if you really need to be able to use the encrypted information (like the email address).
Also, be aware that what you are doing may have legal implications (both the sending of bogus phishing emails and the storage of PII). You should speak to a lawyer in whatever jurisdiction(s) is/are relevant.
Let's say a user is making an account on a website. The e-mail address which is provided by user is saved in mysql, but is hashed before saving. That way a possible hacker is not going to see the e-mail addresses. But on the other hand for me or you ("the programmer") there is no way to see if an user is trying to create an account with the same e-mail address (which I really want to prevent).
Question: In general what is your advice to cope with this problem? Any advice or solutions are appreciated?
Question: Would an account be more "secure" when hashing the e-mail address?
P.S. FYI, this application uses PHP as server language.
UPDATE:
I use BCRYPT with PHP built in salt.
I use mysqli.
Solution #1 - MySQL approach
Add unique index on email column. This will prevent any additional rows with identical email field to be added. No error, smooth.
Assuming your table is users and you store emails in email_hashed:
ALTER TABLE users
ADD UNIQUE (email_hashed)
Needs cleaning first before applying if you already have duplicates.
.
Solution #2 - PHP approach
Simply hash email and SELECT from database all rows with that hash. Like that:
$email = 'ex#example.com';
$hashed = someHashing($email);
$sql = ("SELECT id FROM users WHERE email_hashed = '$email'");
..
If any row will be fetched then you can do something like displaying message, error or anything.
I recommend using both solutions.
EDIT - Regarding... BCrypt...
So yeah, you are using BCrypt. There are two ways for you if you want to hash emails (no idea why, but whatever!). The one for which you will gonna be laughed by everyone and the better one.
The first (laughable) one is to:
SELECT from database entire table with every possible existing hash of emails
Run foreach() {} loop through every hash from database
In every loop compare hashes using password_verify()
If any compare returns true then run some code of your own
The second one is easy:
CHANGE hashing to either md5 (using md5('text') function) or sha256 for longer hashes (using hash('sha256','text'))
Another edit
Question: Would an account be more "secure" when hashing the e-mail address?
I think it's not question to raise on StackOverflow but since it's "a bonus" I will put some thoughts here.
I am not security expert though, so it's possible that I don't know something.
Anyway, hashing passwords with BCrypt and being sure that nothing on the account can be edited in any way that don't require passwords (like flawed API or compromised admin dashboard). I think you should also protect vulnerable data (like names, addresses, phone numbers etc) from public access.
Hashing emails has only one purpose I can think of. That in case of successfull hack, someone who dumped all your database won't get any single email address. That is nice. But it also prevents you from sending newsletters, account expiration notices and other important emails.
In 90% of sites I'd say "hashing emails, are you insane?", but if you don't need to reuse email at all (you won't ever send any email except registration one) and want user emails to be pretty safe, then yes, hashing can prove useful. But please, no BCrypt :P
As S.L Barth states, you can hash the email address as given, perhaps with an ajax request once the field looses focus, and then check if that hash exists in the database, if number of rows returned is > 0 then javascript can output a message saying this account is already registered.
Creating a unique index on the table would also work but this would not feedback an issue until the data was attempted to be written to the database, which will probably be too late. Needless looping for the end user.
Update
If your email address is hashed with a salt and you can't confirm it against the same email address added again, what is the point of storing the email address if it can not be decrypted? Revise your method. Use a php function like Password_hash() and password_verify()
When you hash the email to insert it into the database check if such hashed email already exists, just like you check for that each time a user is logging in.
Accounts would be more secure if you hash everything but that way it would be hard to recover/reset lost username/password because you wouldn't know to what email to send the reset information
on onblur event hashed the email id entered by user and check it whether it is present in mysql email column if it is present it will result in a row then disable button else allow user to insert
use select * from user where email="hashed(email_id_entered)"
if(result>0)
disable button
else
enable
I have been running my website for a few months now and occasionally I find my activation isnt great. After the user signs up, they will receive an email which has an activation link provided.
I have a few problems and want to improve this if possible.
Firstly, the email sometimes doesnt arrive? Any reason for this?
How can I stop it going into the junk mail?
Secondly, at the moment, the activation is their username and an md5 of their username.
Is there a better way to do activations?
I'm always looking to improve and find better ways of doing things!
Thanks for your time.
Email doesn't arrive
First at all, you cannot really rely on mail. Never. Because you can't even know if it was received or read. A mail may be blocked as spam on server side, can be filtered on client side, or can just be lost or ignored.
There may be plenty of causes. For example, you may use e-mail authentication mechanisms. You may also start to check if there is reverse DNS for your domain.
Further, you may want to read some documentation and books to know how spam filters work. It will show you some obvious methods to reduce filtering of your mails, like sending mails in plain text instead of full-HTML, but also less obvious stuff like the words to use, etc.
If you have no choice and you must send mail, probably the most easy solution to prevent spam filtering would be to ask the users to add your domain to the list of safe senders. In practice, nobody will do it for you.
Activation through MD5
There is obviously a better way, since the one you implemented does not provide anything. If the activation is a hash from user name, you can as well just tell the users to calculate the hash themselves (thus avoiding all the problems with mails filtered as spam).
Normally, the users may not know what their activation code would be. It means that the activation code must be random or difficult to guess.
Generate a set of random characters, save them to database and send the code by mail. Then you would just need to validate the code against the one you keep in your database.
Some emails will always end up in the trash folder. It's probably best to put up a notice so that people know to check there, and make it possible for the user to re-request the activation email.
Using the MD5 hash of the username is not a very good idea because anyone can automate that. At the very least add some salt before hashing it, or even better, use a completely unrelated random token saved in your database.
For your second question, you may want to generate a random activation code and store it in a database. When the user clicks the activation link you could verify the code in the database using their e-mail address. This way a malicious user will have a more difficult time automating registration on your site.
$code = md5(uniqid(rand(), true));
If you're on a shared server, services like Yahoo are apt to label you spam. They want you to have a dedicated IP. It's almost impossible to get users to check the 1000 messages in their spam folders for your one activation message.
The MD5 hash is fine if you're hashing with a timestamp.
Keep this implementation, but supplement it with OpenID. That will take care of your Gmail and Yahoo users.
Yes, that's wrong. You shouldn't use MD5 for that.
The most popular way of do it is generating a rand code and saving it in the users table in the DB and send it by email as a GET parameter of the link.
About the emails, I would tell users to look in theit junk folders.
First problem: Make sure your mail isn't spammy. Follow the default guidelines for setting up mail... things like making sure you've got your SPF records configured, your mail is well-formatted, doesn't include spammy words. I generally test against Gmail, Hotmail and a server running SpamAssassin to check mails I send out; examine the headers to see if you're triggering any serious anti-spam rules.
Second problem: You'll want to make sure that the user cannot guess what his activation key is (thus removing the need for receiving the email). An MD5 of the username is insufficient for this. However, if you salt the MD5 you can easily prevent people from generating the MD5's in an automated way (that's an open invitation for automated signups). Adding Salt refers to adding a large amount of pregenerated random data to your input before hashing it. That way, the attacker can't lookup the hash in a 'rainbow table', as he no longer knows what the input for your hash was. Of course, you could just as well use a randomly generated string, which would probably be easier.
Another look on user registration. Let yourself inspire at stackoverflow and use OpenId and you don't have to care about user registration.
Update
You don't need to validate OpenId user via email. A user which signed up via Google or MyOpenId account is valid.
You don't have to care about questions if user is a bot? This servers did it already.
I have never got verification email from stackoverflow.
Mail arriving in the junk folder is a perpetual problem. The range of 'not looking like spam' strategies are numerous. Beyond the Junk folder I think that the overwhelming majority of reported 'not received' situations are actually just delays in propagating the email.
I'm currently implementing a resend for the activation email confirmation despite the fact that it should only actually be necessary in cases where the user has accidentally deleted the email and purged their trash or a transient error has discarded the mail. These cases are going to be rare but do exist so needed to be coded for.
I think the most important reason for implementing the resend of the activation confirm is customer service. It provides the user with an action that they can take while waiting for their mail and in the course of doing so and re-checking their email the activation email will eventually appear.
I wouldn't use the md5 as it creates too predictable a result. You want something that has a random or at least less predictable element. It is then problematic if you are invalidating the hash/token in the original email by resending a new mail so I would avoid overwriting the existing token and would instead re-use the same token which you should have stored or better stored the values from which it can be validated. This does constrain how you create the token as you want to be able to recreate it in the later resend mails or at least to be able to continue to validate all the inflight mails as valid. I am using a session aging model to resend the same token if that token is still valid. There is no reason why the user shouldn't see it as the same token and hence understand that they are all valid. In the case of an expired session/token a new one needs to be generated.
It's good practice to expire the activation mail token in case the mailbox falls into the wrong hands weeks or months later and the old mail is found. Assuming this can have some undesirable effect on the state of the users account at that later point.
I came across this statement
Do not use "forgotten password"
functionality. But if you must, ensure
that you are only providing
information to the actual user, e.g.
by using an email address or challenge
question that the legitimate user
already provided in the past; do not
allow the current user to change this
identity information until the correct
password has been provided.
Can someone clarify why forgotten passwords are a risk? I plan to handle it by sending the user a link in their email to reset the password, but will not provide them with the old password (since it's hashed anyway), and will not ask them for the old password when resetting. Is there something risky about my approach?
Your approach is absolutely right, as long as you don't store the password.
Asking the security question is absolutely bad instead, as it's prone to be bypassed just by guessing an answer.
Just a little edit: although it may be difficult to catch all of them, you should try to disallow the usage of mailinator email accounts (or email addresses from similar services) because mailinator + forgot password = disaster.
If Charlie can read Alices e-mail, he can also gain access to all sites offering "lost password" functionality.
The most annoying technique would be the following: you click forgot password, are asked for you email and get your own password (which many user use for porn and their online banking ;)) back in plaintext instead of setting a new one.
I would just copy the big players methods, like paypal or google. I think they should now what they do. The most common case should be: forgot password - get a link to your email where you can set a new one or generate a random, secure one (which the user will change back to 1234 immediately).
As we are there already: never return something like "wrong password", as this implies that at least the username exists.
Sending the user a link in an email is actually in compliance with the guidance given.
What it advices against is the practice of allowing users to reset their password without having to have any additional knowledge, i.e. something like a button that will reset the password without forcing the user to click the link in their email. I'm not sure I ever saw such a system, but it is certainly a bad idea =).
Your approach sounds very safe to me :) Ofcourse it should be a one-time link!
Also the "succes" and "email address not found" message/page should be the same. And have an anonymous text.
Like:
"If your mail address is in our system we have send you an email"
In this way, someone will be unable to determine if the email address is in your system or not!
As long as you send the link to the e-mail you have stored on the system then you should be OK - and it's what I'd expect from a system.
I'd also send a confirmation "you have updated your password" to the same address.
Additionally, if the user changes their e-mail address you could consider sending an e-mail to the old address stating that it's been changed to the new one. Slightly annoying perhaps, but it would provide an extra point at which someone could spot if their account has been compromised.
It's rather a sweeping statement and only a bad idea if you don't understand the risks involved and are sure that there is a net benefit (as with most things in life).
You should never store passwords in a recoverable form. Even allowing the customer to store a hint on your system puts the customer at risk. Passwords must always be stored using non-reversible mechanism - i.e. a hash. Given that is the case, you can't recover the customer's old password and send it to them.
Resetting the password on-demand to a random value, then emailing that value to the customer presents the opportunity to carry out denial of service attacks against individual logins (also the case when you disable an account after a number of failed login attempts).
That only leaves the option of generating an alternate login for the customer and emailing it to them - and flagging the account to force the customer to select a new password at next login.
All these approaches delegate the security of the customer account to the customers email system (and all the other email and network components between your server and the customer's inbox) which can, at best be very leaky - certainly its not anything you can provide any guarantees of security over unless you control all of the infrastructure.
C.
We need to provide a way to reset password for users who are using our website. The typical way is to send email to the user and ask to click on the link to reset.
The issue is that we don't want to run a mail server just for the purpose of resetting password. Is there other clever way of reseting password without having to mail the user?
EDIT: This is for users who forgot their passwords.
You need some way to validate the user's identity to prevent other people resetting the password. Perhaps you could get them to set up some questions (like mother's maiden name, favourite colour) when they sign up. They can only reset their password if they correctly answer the questions.
You can immediately expire their current password and require them to change it next time they login. A couple of password reset systems do this.
EDIT: Since this is for users that forgot their password rather than a forced change, you should just take them directly to the link you would have emailed them anyway when they forgot their password. Make them enter an e-mail address they registered with and some other data you can validate with. Basically, what the other answers said.
I had this same issue with a very odd and demanding client. The site was a company intranet, that could be accessed via a VPN for telecommuters. One of the requirements (it was written in bold):
Password re-set mechanism should be convenient and not rely on e-mail. Re-set requests must be granted conveniently and require evidence that the site trusted the visitor prior to the re-set request
What I ended up doing was generating a Manderbolt (100x100) for the user to download as their 're-set' token, along with some secret questions that they would have to answer. To change their password, they would have to answer their questions and upload their fractal (the quadratic plane was defined based on their private information with simple hashing to avoid collisions).
This satisfied a requirement that password re-sets had to be based on what they had as well as what they knew. If they lost the fractal or forgot the answers to their secret questions, they had to appear in person to have the password re-set.
Not exactly bullet proof, but it satisfied the needs at the time. The challenge was making the fractals unique (at least 30 pixels unique), since most users shared a lot of common private data (city, state, area code, etc).
Edit
The fractal (rather, a one way representation of it) was used elsewhere as well. Think RFID + camera.
You could use standard mail to send new password :-).
Generally you need to verify that user which is trying to reset the password is the one who was originally registered. The easiest way is to send password reset link to email used on registration. Alternatively you can have some kind of security question, which will allow to reset the password, but most people will choose something really lame and you end up with server where it is quite easy to steal identities.
There must be some class that comunicates directly with remote SMTP server (e.g., ISP's SMTP server) by using sockets - just find such class and you won't have to run private SMTP server to send e-mails.
Use OpenID. Then it becomes the problem of an OpenID service provider to recover your users' passwords. And your users will be thankful for they don't need to remember yet another stinky password.
The usual answer to this would be some form of security question. If you don't have some barrier for the user to cross, you open the system up to allow almost anyone to reset the password.