Pwned
An easy, Ruby way to use the Pwned Passwords API.
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- About
- Installation
- Usage
- How Pwned is Pi?
- Development
- Contributing
- License
- Code of Conduct
About
Troy Hunt's Pwned Passwords API allows you to check if a password has been found in any of the huge data breaches.
Pwned
is a Ruby library to use the Pwned Passwords API's k-Anonymity model to test a password against the API without sending the entire password to the service.
The data from this API is provided by Have I been pwned?. Before using the API, please check the acceptable uses and license of the API.
Here is a blog post I wrote on how to use this gem in your Ruby applications to make your users' passwords better.
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'pwned'
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install pwned
Usage
There are a few ways you can use this gem:
Plain Ruby
To test a password against the API, instantiate a Pwned::Password
object and then ask if it is pwned?
.
password = Pwned::Password.new("password")
password.pwned?
#=> true
password.pwned_count
#=> 3303003
You can also check how many times the password appears in the dataset.
password = Pwned::Password.new("password")
password.pwned_count
#=> 3303003
Since you are likely using this as part of a sign-up flow, it is recommended that you rescue errors so if the service does go down, your user journey is not disturbed.
begin
password = Pwned::Password.new("password")
password.pwned?
rescue Pwned::Error => e
# Ummm... don't worry about it, I guess?
end
Most of the times you only care if the password has been pwned before or not. You can use simplified accessors to check whether the password has been pwned, or how many times it was pwned:
Pwned.pwned?("password")
#=> true
Pwned.pwned_count("password")
#=> 3303003
Custom request options
You can set HTTP request options to be used with Net::HTTP.start
when making the request to the API. These options are documented in the Net::HTTP.start
documentation.
You can pass the options to the constructor:
password = Pwned::Password.new("password", read_timeout: 10)
You can also specify global defaults:
Pwned.default_request_options = { read_timeout: 10 }
HTTP Headers
The :headers
option defines HTTP headers. These headers must be string keys.
password = Pwned::Password.new("password", headers: {
'User-Agent' => 'Super fun new user agent'
})
HTTP Proxy
An HTTP proxy can be set using the http_proxy
or HTTP_PROXY
environment variable. This is the same way that Net::HTTP
handles HTTP proxies if no proxy options are given. See URI::Generic#find_proxy
for full details on how Ruby detects a proxy from the environment.
# Set in the environment
ENV["http_proxy"] = "https://username:[email protected]:12345"
# Will use the above proxy
password = Pwned::Password.new("password")
You can specify a custom HTTP proxy with the :proxy
option:
password = Pwned::Password.new(
"password",
proxy: "https://username:[email protected]:12345"
)
If you don't want to set a proxy and you don't want a proxy to be inferred from the environment, set the :ignore_env_proxy
key:
password = Pwned::Password.new("password", ignore_env_proxy: true)
ActiveRecord Validator
There is a custom validator available for your ActiveRecord models:
class User < ApplicationRecord
validates :password, not_pwned: true
# or
validates :password, not_pwned: { message: "has been pwned %{count} times" }
end
I18n
You can change the error message using I18n (use %{count}
to interpolate the number of times the password was seen in the data breaches):
en:
errors:
messages:
not_pwned: has been pwned %{count} times
pwned_error: might be pwned
Threshold
If you are ok with the password appearing a certain number of times before you decide it is invalid, you can set a threshold. The validator will check whether the pwned_count
is greater than the threshold.
class User < ApplicationRecord
# The record is marked as valid if the password has been used once in the breached data
validates :password, not_pwned: { threshold: 1 }
end
Network Error Handling
By default the record will be treated as valid when we cannot reach the haveibeenpwned.com servers. This can be changed with the :on_error
validator parameter:
class User < ApplicationRecord
# The record is marked as valid on network errors.
validates :password, not_pwned: true
validates :password, not_pwned: { on_error: :valid }
# The record is marked as invalid on network errors
# (error message "could not be verified against the past data breaches".)
validates :password, not_pwned: { on_error: :invalid }
# The record is marked as invalid on network errors with custom error.
validates :password, not_pwned: { on_error: :invalid, error_message: "might be pwned" }
# We will raise an error on network errors.
# This means that `record.valid?` will raise `Pwned::Error`.
# Not recommended to use in production.
validates :password, not_pwned: { on_error: :raise_error }
# Call custom proc on error. For example, capture errors in Sentry,
# but do not mark the record as invalid.
validates :password, not_pwned: {
on_error: ->(record, error) { Raven.capture_exception(error) }
}
end
Custom Request Options
You can configure network requests made from the validator using :request_options
(see Net::HTTP.start for the list of available options).
validates :password, not_pwned: {
request_options: {
read_timeout: 5,
open_timeout: 1
}
}
These options override the globally defined default options (see above).
In addition to these options, you can also set the following:
HTTP Headers
HTTP headers can be specified with the :headers
key (e.g. "User-Agent"
)
validates :password, not_pwned: {
request_options: {
headers: { "User-Agent" => "Super fun user agent" }
}
}
HTTP Proxy
An HTTP proxy can be set using the http_proxy
or HTTP_PROXY
environment variable. This is the same way that Net::HTTP
handles HTTP proxies if no proxy options are given. See URI::Generic#find_proxy
for full details on how Ruby detects a proxy from the environment.
# Set in the environment
ENV["http_proxy"] = "https://username:[email protected]:12345"
validates :password, not_pwned: true
You can specify a custom HTTP proxy with the :proxy
key:
validates :password, not_pwned: {
request_options: {
proxy: "https://username:[email protected]:12345"
}
}
If you don't want to set a proxy and you don't want a proxy to be inferred from the environment, set the :ignore_env_proxy
key:
validates :password, not_pwned: {
request_options: {
ignore_env_proxy: true
}
}
Using Asynchronously
You may have a use case for hashing the password in advance, and then making the call to the Pwned Passwords API later (for example if you want to enqueue a job without storing the plaintext password). To do this, you can hash the password with the Pwned.hash_password
method and then initialize the Pwned::HashedPassword
class with the hash, like this:
hashed_password = Pwned.hash_password(password)
# some time later
Pwned::HashedPassword.new(hashed_password, request_options).pwned?
The Pwned::HashedPassword
constructor takes all the same options as the regular Pwned::Password
constructor.
Devise
If you are using Devise I recommend you use the devise-pwned_password extension which is now powered by this gem.
Rodauth
If you are using Rodauth then you can use the rodauth-pwned feature which is powered by this gem.
Command line
The gem provides a command line utility for checking passwords. You can call it from your terminal application like this:
$ pwned password
Pwned!
The password has been found in public breaches 3645804 times.
If you don't want the password you are checking to be visible, call:
$ pwned --secret
You will be prompted for the password, but it won't be displayed.
Unpwn
To cut down on unnecessary network requests, the unpwn project uses a list of the top one million passwords to check passwords against. Only if a password is not included in the top million is it then checked against the Pwned Passwords API.
How Pwned is Pi?
@daz shared a fantastic example of using this gem to show how many times the digits of Pi have been used as passwords and leaked.
require 'pwned'
PI = '3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111'
for n in 1..40
password = Pwned::Password.new PI[0..(n + 1)]
str = [ n.to_s.rjust(2) ]
str << (password.pwned? ? '๐ก' : '๐')
str << password.pwned_count.to_s.rjust(4)
str << password.password
puts str.join ' '
end
The results may, or may not, surprise you.
1 ๐ก 16 3.1
2 ๐ก 238 3.14
3 ๐ก 34 3.141
4 ๐ก 1345 3.1415
5 ๐ก 2552 3.14159
6 ๐ก 791 3.141592
7 ๐ก 9582 3.1415926
8 ๐ก 1591 3.14159265
9 ๐ก 637 3.141592653
10 ๐ก 873 3.1415926535
11 ๐ก 137 3.14159265358
12 ๐ก 103 3.141592653589
13 ๐ก 65 3.1415926535897
14 ๐ก 201 3.14159265358979
15 ๐ก 41 3.141592653589793
16 ๐ก 57 3.1415926535897932
17 ๐ก 28 3.14159265358979323
18 ๐ก 29 3.141592653589793238
19 ๐ก 1 3.1415926535897932384
20 ๐ก 7 3.14159265358979323846
21 ๐ก 5 3.141592653589793238462
22 ๐ก 2 3.1415926535897932384626
23 ๐ก 2 3.14159265358979323846264
24 ๐ 0 3.141592653589793238462643
25 ๐ก 3 3.1415926535897932384626433
26 ๐ 0 3.14159265358979323846264338
27 ๐ 0 3.141592653589793238462643383
28 ๐ 0 3.1415926535897932384626433832
29 ๐ 0 3.14159265358979323846264338327
30 ๐ 0 3.141592653589793238462643383279
31 ๐ 0 3.1415926535897932384626433832795
32 ๐ 0 3.14159265358979323846264338327950
33 ๐ 0 3.141592653589793238462643383279502
34 ๐ 0 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028
35 ๐ 0 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288
36 ๐ 0 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884
37 ๐ 0 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841
38 ๐ 0 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419
39 ๐ 0 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197
40 ๐ 0 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971
Development
After checking out the repository, run bin/setup
to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec
to run the tests. You can also run bin/console
for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.
To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install
. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb
, and then run bundle exec rake release
, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem
file to rubygems.org.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/philnash/pwned. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.
License
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.
Code of Conduct
Everyone interacting in the Pwned projectโs codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.