Bug 6220

Summary: koha puts default passwords but doesn't tell you what is
Product: Koha Reporter: Fernando L. Canizo <conan>
Component: PatronsAssignee: Kyle M Hall <kyle.m.hall>
Status: CLOSED INVALID QA Contact: Bugs List <koha-bugs>
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P5 - low CC: gmcharlt, katrin.fischer, nengard
Version: Main   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
Change sponsored?: --- Patch complexity: ---
Documentation contact: Documentation submission:
Text to go in the release notes:
Version(s) released in:

Description Fernando L. Canizo 2011-04-20 15:44:54 UTC
If you create a patron and don't set a password koha will fill the password field. But there's no hint on creation that this will happen, nor indication what password you will get.

There should be a message (maybe via HTML 'label' or 'title') stating you will get a default password anyway and also saying which one will be. Maybe something like: "If you don't supply a password, system will fill with <this_default_password>"

Also this information should be visibly highlighted, and a status flag should be set to indicate that and warn the patron to change it as soon as possible.

Default password should be a system preference and it should be possible to set different ones for different libraries.

Summary:

- hint with a visible message about the automatic password filling
- show default password in page (creation and modification), it will be know for everbody anyway
- allow for different default passwords per library in system preferences
Comment 1 Nicole C. Engard 2011-04-20 16:06:43 UTC
The database is actually empty - there is no password generated (that was my understanding) the *** you see is just always there - it's part of the template.

Someone else can confirm for me before I close this bug - or change the title to 'password needs template edits'

Nicole
Comment 2 Katrin Fischer 2011-04-20 16:09:55 UTC
I don't really like the idea of a default password. People tend to keep passwords like that and never change them. I makes it much easier to hack patron accounts.

When you change a password Koha can already generate a new random password in the length specified in the sys prefs. I would like to see Koha generating a password like this one  upon saving a patron with an empty password field.
Koha can send out this password as a mail to the patron, if the library wants to do this. We already can do this with manually entered passwords.

Ideal would be a to create a one time password and force the patron to change it when he logs into the OPAC for the first time. Perhaps these one time passwords should even expire after a given time or be validated by a mail to the patrons email account.
Comment 3 Fernando L. Canizo 2011-04-20 17:10:09 UTC
(In reply to comment #1)
> The database is actually empty - there is no password generated (that was my
> understanding) the *** you see is just always there - it's part of the
> template.
> 
> Someone else can confirm for me before I close this bug - or change the title
> to 'password needs template edits'
> 
> Nicole

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, I just created a patron named 'haspassword', give him no password in opac login group and it shows this on DB:

mysql> select password from borrowers where surname = 'haspassword';
+------------------------+
| password               |
+------------------------+
| kDPg4wXyR8DDyA0MeEjIsw |
+------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Comment 4 Fernando L. Canizo 2011-04-20 17:11:57 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> I don't really like the idea of a default password. People tend to keep
> passwords like that and never change them. I makes it much easier to hack
> patron accounts.
> 
> When you change a password Koha can already generate a new random password in
> the length specified in the sys prefs. I would like to see Koha generating a
> password like this one  upon saving a patron with an empty password field.
> Koha can send out this password as a mail to the patron, if the library wants
> to do this. We already can do this with manually entered passwords.
> 
> Ideal would be a to create a one time password and force the patron to change
> it when he logs into the OPAC for the first time. Perhaps these one time
> passwords should even expire after a given time or be validated by a mail to
> the patrons email account.

I agree to all:

- random one time passwords sent by email
- force patrons to change it on first login

And we wont need no changes into prefs.
Comment 5 Owen Leonard 2011-08-22 13:42:23 UTC
The original description of this bug seems to be a duplicate of Bug 3674 and
Bug 6224. The discussion has steered towards a new kind of password handling
for new accounts, but that should have its own enhancement bug (and RFC too
probably).