A reimagining of WordPress authentication using modern security practices.

Tang Rufus

Itineris Limited

Disallow Pwned Password

Disallow WordPress and WooCommerce users using pwned passwords.

Carsten Bach

Cornel Raiu

Carl Alexander

riper81

Celso Bessa

<p><strong>Important Notice:</strong> This plugin is no longer supported on wordpress.org. Please open issues on <a href="https://github.com/carlalexander/passwords-evolved/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a>.</p>
<p>The goal of this plugin is to shore up the WordPress authentication using standard security practice recommendations. At this time, the plugin improves WordPress authentication by doing the following:</p>
<h4>Enforcing uncompromised passwords</h4>
<p>This plugin prevents someone from using passwords that have appeared in data breaches. Whenever someone logs into a WordPress site, it’ll verify their password using the <a href="https://haveibeenpwned.com/API/v2" rel="nofollow ugc">Have I been pwned? API</a>. If their password appeared in a data breach, the plugin will prevent them from logging in until they reset their password.</p>
<p>By default, this level of enforcement is only done on an account that has the “<a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities#Administrator" rel="nofollow ugc">administrator</a>” role. You can change which roles have their passwords enforced from the settings page. For people that have a role where there’s no password enforcement, the plugin will show a warning when they log in with a compromised password.</p>
<p>The enforcement of uncompromised password also extends to when someone resets or changes their password. That said, in those situations, using an uncompromised password is mandatory. Someone will never be able to reset or change their password to one that’s appeared in a security breach. (As long as the plugin is able to contact the API.)</p>
<h4>Using stronger password hashing</h4>
<p>The plugin also encrypts passwords using either the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt" rel="nofollow ugc">bcrypt</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon2" rel="nofollow ugc">Argon2</a> hashing functions. These are the strongest hashing functions available in PHP. Argon2 is available natively starting with PHP 7.2, but the plugin can also encrypt passwords on older PHP versions using the <a href="https://libsodium.org" rel="nofollow ugc">libsodium</a> compatibility layer introduced in WordPress 5.2.</p>
<p>You don’t have to do anything to convert your password hash to a stronger encryption standard. The plugin will take care of converting it the next time that you log in after installing the plugin. If you decide to remove the plugin, your password will continue working and remain encrypted until you reset it.</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that using a stronger hashing function is only important in the advent of a data breach. A stronger password hashing function makes decrypting the passwords from the data breach a lot harder to do. This combined with the enforcement of uncompromised passwords will help ensure that those passwords are never decrypted. (Or at least without significant effort.)</p>


Passwords Evolved

This seems to work very well, at least no issues - immediate or long term. A client user was very surprised that "WordPress" could know their password was "pwned", but thankful for the reminder.

Beware that if you deactivate this plugin, users have to reset their passwords. So just keep it - for the enhanced security through a modern and relatively simple plugin.

Should be added to core, IMO.

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