179 points

Emojis are known to break systems in certain circumstances due to the way they’re interpreted in certain character sets.

I guarantee people doing this will not only lock out their own accounts, but may even freeze some authentication servers.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/want-to-brick-an-iphone-send-some-emojis

https://www.itechpost.com/articles/75762/20170119/brick-iphone-using-emojis-plus-tricks-dont-know.htm

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49 points
*

The website should feed your password straight into a well known hashing algorithm or key derivation function that has undergone a decade or more of careful scrutiny, without any other processing. The output will usually be a fixed length base64 or hex string.

There’s a short list of about three options that are currently considered acceptable, and a few more are probably fine but are a little too easy to crack these days (e.g. anything that shares the same math as bitcoin… what if someone throws a mining datacentre at your password?)

If the site breaks, maybe you don’t to be a customer of that service.

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19 points

Can you still log in to wellsfargo accounts using the T9 translation of your password?

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8 points

make one account with emoji password to test their system, if it break, good, go create hour account somewhere else

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6 points

It’s not the processing on the server that’s the problem. To reach the server the password needs to go through several layers of character encoding, if any of them fails the server will receive something different from what you meant. And when you try to login from another device and the layers will be different you’ll effectively be sending a different password.

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4 points

The same character encoding that would break emoji would break a significant portion of the words names, so if your system can’t handle it, then you deserve all the trouble that you run into.

Unicode isn’t that hard.

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0 points

It’s not the 90s anymore.

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28 points
*

auth servers breaking from emojis would be hilarious, pretty sure that’s why older auth servers only allow certain symbols in passwords

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35 points

“Your password ‘🤣umådbrø⁉️’ is breaking our server. Please change it.”

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9 points

“Of course. What is the server’s root password?”

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13 points

If some auth server breaks because I put emojis in my password then that’s right and deserved

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6 points

Sounds like a crappy implementation of the authentication server then, and the sysadmin deserves a paddlin’ for not stripping non-UTF characters (or making sure they work).

My problem with using emojis as part of the password would rather be that while I might be able to enter them on my personal Android phone using the exact keyboard app I have installed right now, I might find myself struggling on a desktop computer or any other phone that doesn’t have this exact keyboard installed. After all, the graphical representation of the same emoji might look different there, and there is a chance I couldn’t even recognize it.

So if anything, I’d say use a non-UTF keyboard like Thai or Chinese, but then a standard character in that specific type. Keyboards layout can be installed across devices and are fully standardized, even if the same character looks slightly different.

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17 points

Stripping characters from passwords, great idea! Right up there with truncating passwords that are too long.

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-5 points
Deleted by creator
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3 points

also some OSKs put whitespaces after inserting an emoji, some doesn’t. there’s no unified emoji input method yet.

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2 points

There’s no such thing as a non-UTF8 character. You mean non-UTF8 bytes? If a system sees those, it should reject the entire input, not try to patch it up.

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4 points
*

and there are many trash implementations that dont recognise something like :emoticon: as shortcut and turn it into emoji, no no you have to use emoji keyboard to type them

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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4 points

OTOH, there is only one character set that matters, and any system using a different one is, by that fact alone, broken.

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0 points
4 points

I said only one that matters. So I already did pick one. It’s called Unicode.

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-6 points

That only applies to iphones that came out 2016 or earlier and we’re never updated right?

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25 points

Hahaha, I wish.

You would be amazed at how ancient and poorly maintained many web servers are on the modern internet. SQL injection still consistently make the top 3 web app vulnerabilities as of 2021. If that isn’t being sanitized properly I don’t expect emojis would be handled much better.

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4 points

Thanks I wasn’t aware of that

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7 points
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For that particular bug, yes, but there have been many other variations on that theme and not limited to Apple tech. I’ve seen it nuke an email send for example because the SMTP server choked on emojis placed in a subject, to, or from line.

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3 points

Thanks I appreciate the clarification

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124 points

💯🐴🔋(umm, staple)

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43 points

Correct horse battery staple!

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14 points
*

But was it a 💯 or was it a ✅? Damn neither. Let’s try with 👍…

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100 horse batteries

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24 points

Jeez, you’re right. We got pens, pencils, stock charts, even those folders with the colored label tabs, but no stapler, the most basic of office equipment.

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17 points

When it’s added, I expect most implementations will make it red.

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5 points

I want it to be pregnant

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3 points

Hopefully it’s compatible with skin tone modifier.

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111 points

Good luck logging in a Smart TV.

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60 points

Security Experts probably don’t log into smart tvs all that often. Just a guess.

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18 points

Sorta how car designers never have to actually fix cars.

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4 points

But why wouldn’t it make sense to need to pull the cab off of a pickup truck to change the spark plugs?

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1 point

That’s true for all car designers. You’re referring to the shitty designers, though.

Architects don’t get involved in the actual construction of a building either.

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1 point

Car expert

Well how about my paddle car

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14 points

Logging in a smart tv? Lol!

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3 points

All the apps I’ve used recently use QR codes (or similar measures, like a sync code) that has you log in from the phone, so it should work anyway!

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4 points

But not all apps, sadly, I just experimented it with Crunchyroll, and saw my dad struggling with a crappy app called Vix yesterday.

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1 point

Fair enough. I’m mostly using “big ones” plus SmartTube.

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2 points

In my experience the only one that works with any degree of reliability is YouTube. Even the Netflix one can be fairly intermittent.

Also a lot in the time you’ll go away and the hotel you’re in will have a smart TV and the software was last updated in 2011 so you have to sign in on the device.

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-1 points

Scan the QR code and log in on your phone. Oooh scary

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5 points
*

I’ve had to manually type in passwords on a TV several times in the last few months because sometimes the login for even the biggest brand-name services is just broken.

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62 points

Terrible idea, good luck logging in on desktop.

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40 points

You know there’s someone somewhere who would answer you with, “what’s a desktop?”

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16 points
9 points

Listen here, you little shit

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6 points

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

“what’s a computer?”

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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2 points

Dammit I’d forgotten that awful commercial. Angry upvote.

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4 points

I’m still in denial 😅

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3 points

I began feeling old when re**itors started calling their site an ‘app’

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1 point

You can say Reddit it isn’t blasphemous

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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12 points
*

Wait, you can’t type emoji on your desktop? I feel sorry for you. 🥺

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1 point

I have no idea how you could either. I don’t know how to create them with s keyboard

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4 points

Winkey + .

Works on Windows and some Linux distros by default

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2 points

Firefox has an addon that opens up an emoji panel.

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11 points

For Windows 10/11, its win+; to open the emote window.

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7 points

Cmd+Ctrl+Spacebar on Mac

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0 points

Huh! TIL ☺

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2 points

That doesn’t work on the desktop last I checked.

But it’s actually possible to set a password with emojis anyways (or at least for domain accounts). I successfully logged in on a VM using the Hyper-V window and pasting the emoji from the host. You can also name an account a single emoji and windows actually handles it decently. It’s very likely to break a lot of programs though.

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1 point
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Its worked on desktops for years and works right now. As someone else pointed out “win+.” works as well. Or maybe its supposed to be the only way it works and mine is bugged? Idk. I found it via trying to lock my desktop and mistyping.

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1 point
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It worked on my desktop

😁👍╰(°▽°)╯

Works even in notepad on Windows 11, lol

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1 point

It’s Windows logo key  + . (period).

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1 point

Both work for me and I haven’t messed with the keybindings for it.

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1 point

Who needs Reddit when people like you are here on Lemmy.

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1 point

Under Windows press Win+.

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56 points

Security expert reveals surprising way to induce headaches

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14 points
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Security experts don’t actually have to work on corporate IT systems.

So you’ve set your password to contain a 😇 have you?
Ok so how are you going to type it on this desktop computer keyboard here…
Yeah I thought not.

I’ll just go reset your password shall I?

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5 points
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win+. (works on kde too afaik…?)

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5 points

I’ll let you be in charge of teaching them that. I literally had to talk someone through how to type an exclamation mark today, I don’t think they’re going to handle the extended Unicode character set.

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