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Comment by RossM | Hacker News Reader

I'm no security guru but with a little sensibility on the website itself could lessen the security risk from dictionary attacks. If you allow 3 login attempts before requiring a captcha, or set a maximum number of attempts per hour, giving your users more memorable passwords shouldn't be too much of a risk.

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A very good point, though I would encourage something closer to 25 or 100 login attempts. Don't punish clumsy users for having a secure password, but prevent brute-forces by all means.

25 or 100?

First attempt: quick typing, conscious mistake.

Second attempt: quick typing, wrong password again.

Third attempt: okay, I'll type it in carefully now. Wrong password.

Fourth attempt: oh, yes, that was my Yahoo! password. Remembers password and enters it cautiously, because he/she knows that he has a maximum of 5 login attempts.

Five are enough for me. Or at most 10. 100 seem ridiculous. How often does it happen that you mistype your password 99 times and get it right on the one-hundredth, before you're tired of being shown the "wrong password" message and click the "forgot password" link?

I'm only suggesting an implementation that is transparent for the user. 10 would probably be just fine, but 25 would be closer to an impossible situation without significantly increasing the odds of a successful attack.

Yes, that's the best way to prevent account hijacking, in my opinion. Or block the IP for 30 minutes after 5 failed logins, that renders any dictionary attack terribly inefficient.

Better to switch to a captcha. Banning might provoke DoS attacks.

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