2.18 No username enumeration

Verify that information enumeration is not possible via login, password reset, or forgot account functionality.

Levels: 1, 2, 3

Drupal 7

By default Drupal does not meet this requirement, see also: Drupal.org Project: username Enumeration Prevention.

General

A system should not disclose whether a username (usually half of the credentials required to log in) is valid or not. Note that this may actually cary a business risk, that is that if I disclose that someone is a member a competitor may use this as an advantage to try to ‘steal’ the customer. Or it might put the user in an uncomfortable position, if an attacker can verify that he/she is a member of certain sites. A simple test can be to try to authenticate first with a non-existent account. Note that in theory you might also use a timing attack for this. Non-existent usernames may give an error page faster than usernames that are known but where the password supplied is wrong, especially with a hashing mechanism like bcrypt.

Symfony 2

The default authentication controls for Symfony2 meet this requirement.