Re: Password policy: possible DoS scenario
----- "Konstantin Boyandin" <temmokan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> Narrower question: do password policy module developers plan
to
take
>> into account what IPs are used to connect (thus, blocking only
access
>> from specific IPs)?
>
> Maybe you should provide a specific use case, besides "my users
violate my
> terms of use, and I can't do anything about it".
A typical use case is this. We make users change their passwords
regularly, password policy was introduced to further urge to use
safer
credentials.
Now imagine a person's email being checked regularly from outside the
intranet. After the specified attempts the account gets locked. The
only
option we have in such a case is to firewall the address that sends
wrong credentials.
There are other options. ppolicy is not meant to prevent attacks on accounts, but to try
and prevent attacks on accounts being successful. Prevention (or other responses) are only
possible if the attacks are detected. If you want attackers to be able to make as many
attempts as they like to try and compromise accounts, you would be better off without
ppolicy.
In case the locks are IP-bound, they would only affect those
attempting
to gain access (regardless of whether those are legitimate or
unauthorized attempts).
But it opens you up to making it easier for attackers to brute-force your accounts.
However, in your scenario of a user's email account being attacked, to LDAP, the
client IP address is that of your mail server, so having IP-specific lockout would not
help you.
Regards,
Buchan