It's well documented that Chrome and Firefox ignore the standard autocomplete="off" attribute in html as they (Google) feel it wasn't being used correctly. They have even come up with workarounds and their own set of values for autofilling fields.
However, We need to prevent users passwords from being auto-filled for a website we're working on, and none of the suggestions put forward by Google appear to work.
The current situation on our website is that login names and passwords are stored by the browser, and so when a user visits the site and they're forced to login, their username and passwords are pre-populated in the relevant fields and they simply click the login button to login.
This has been deemed insecure, and while the infosec team are happy for the username to be pre-populated, they insist the password field is not.
To start with I tried adding the autocomplete="off" attribute to the password fields, but the password was still pre-populated. After some googling I found this link that shows Google decided to ignore this value and come up with a list of their own values for the autocomplete attribute...
Google ignores autocomplete="off"
They state that if we add our own, non-recognised value (such as autocomplete="please-dont-auto-fill-me") if shouldnt auto fill as it wouldnt know what that value is for.
However, I added something more meaningful - autocomplete="non-filled-value" - and it still populated the field. I've since tried a number of other things, such as renaming the password input control (removing the word "password" from the control name) etc and nothing seems to work. every time I load the login page, the password is pre-populated.
The issue I have is that my login form will be loaded on multiple browsers as different users from around the world login, and I need a solution that works for all browsers, not just Chrome.
Does anyone have any experience of this, and has a working solution for preventing fields being pre-populated/auto-filled that works cross browser? Everything I've tried (renaming fields, adding hidden fields, setting obscure autocomplete attribute values) fails to work, and whatever I try, the password is pre-populated.
Obviously, I have no control over the users actual browser settings and cant force them all to change their own personal settings.
New approach
I know how frustrating it is to try all solutions and seeing user and password fields ignore them.
Unforturnately, I haven't found a straightforward way of doing this, but I have a workaround for avoiding user password fields getting autofilled.
The problem
The main problem is that if you set input type="password", browsers automatically try fo autofill the field with saved passwords and users for the webapp, and nothing seems to work in order to stop it.
The solution
My approach is to avoid setting input type="passoword", but making the field look like a password field.
The way I found to achieve this was to build a font composed only by discs, so when you type anything in the input field, it looks like a password field, but you will never be prompted with saved user and password credentials.
I've tested this solution on Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge, please let me know if is something worong with other browsers.
I know the solution is awful, but seems to work.
Link to the font, made by me using Font Forge: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xWGciDI-cQVxDP_H8s7OfdJt44ukBWQl/view?usp=sharing
Example
Browsers will not fill in the input elements because none of them is type="password"
Place the .ttf file in the same directory where you create the following html file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Font Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<span>Name: </span><input type="text"/>
<span>Password: </span><input class="disk-font" type="text"/>
</body>
<style>
#font-face {
font-family: disks;
src: url(disks.ttf);
}
.disk-font{
font-family: disks;
}
</style>
</html>
Hope this is helpful, feel free to comment any issue.
Actually, i've recently faced this issue, and a workaround which worked form me is just setting the value as an empty string on a method (can be onload, for example if the input is in your main screen). Would be something like:
let login = document.querySelector('#inputLogin');
let password = document.querySelector('#inputPassword');
function someFun () {
login.value = '';
password.value = '';
}
Also I've already tried to put autocomplete="false" but didn't work.
As explained in this MDN article, autocomplete="off" will be ignored for password auto-fill, but autocomplete="new-password" is likely to work, though it carries additional semantic information:
If you are defining a user management page where a user can specify a new password for another person, and therefore you want to prevent autofilling of password fields, you can use autocomplete="new-password".
This is a hint, which browsers are not required to comply with. However modern browsers have stopped autofilling elements with autocomplete="new-password" for this very reason. For example, Firefox version 67 (see bug 1119063) stopped autofilling in this case; however, Firefox 70 (see bug 1565407) can suggest securely-generated passwords, but does not autofill a saved password. See the autocomplete compat table for more details.
Related
Is there any way to stop this behavour?
<div class="form-group">
<label for="user-profile-name-input">Name</label>
<input type="text" id="user-profile-name-input" class="form-control" aria-describedby="name" placeholder="Name" value="...">
</div>
So every time a change anything is this input field and navigate to a new page within my website, the browser prompts me if I would like to update my username for the saved password of the site.
Is there any way to stop this behaviour?
I trying adding autocomplete=off but there was no change.
-----
UPDATE
Ok so I managed to figure it out. It was an error on my part. Keeping this post here incase anyone else encounters this issue.
I have a couple of bootstrap modals on the same page. One of them has a type=password input. Since these are not completely removed when hidden the browser still has a reference to the password input.
I removed the modal and the browser is no longer prompting for me to update my username to the saved password every time i change a value in an input field.
Make sure you dont have a hidden input "type=password" somewhere on your page.
What you're asking for cannot be done at a code level. The behavior you're experiencing is browser specific and is something that can only be turned off by the user themselves if they choose to.
An example of how you can turn it off in Chrome here.
The browser recognizes the input field as a password field and therefore prompts for a password save, since the browser does not have a password stored for that specific page. Clicking "Never" will only stop the prompt for that page specifically, and any future page will still continue to prompt you until you completely disable the feature.
There are some hacky, tacky solutions to your problem if you really wanna go about it - check this post for instance, or this one. However, I strongly recommend that you don't use them as they are detrimental to the user experience. Let the user decide whether they want the feature or not.
That's a default functionality provided by chrome to save your credentials while you enter your credentials in your account in browser and not to repeat the credentials when you are trying to re login. There's no way to stop it by using HTML code.
I have code to prevent password to autofill from browser, but I can not still prevent it for username textbox on the HTML page.
Here is the code for the password field on the page.
enter code here
<input type="text" name="abc" id="abc">
<style>
-webkit-text-security:desc;
</style>
Here this code makes my textbox looks alike as the password field, and it's working fine. Even browser doesn't ask for save passwords.
Please suggest me guys for username.
Autocomplete allows the browser to predict the value. When a user starts to type in a field, the browser should display options to fill in the field, based on earlier typed values.
Note: The autocomplete attribute works with the following types: text, search, url, tel, email, password, datepickers, range, and color.
<input type="text" name="test" autocomplete="off" />
Still there are some facts you need to know about this attribute , those are as below:
Firefox 30 ignores autocomplete="off" for passwords, opting to prompt the user instead whether the password should be stored on the client.
The password manager always prompts if it wants to save a password. Passwords are not saved without permission from the user.
According to Mozilla developer documentation the form element attribute autocomplete prevents form data from being cached in older browsers.
Also some chrome extensions also on automcomplete it self so when your testing this attribute just make sure you disable those extensions.
I have an angular form like this
<ng-form name="AddTaskForm" autocomplete="off">
......
</ng-form>
However when I begin entering data, chrome is still prompting me with previously entered values.
How can I prevent chrome (and all browsers) from showing any drop down on my input with previously entered values?
I did some search and found that people were writing custom directives, but not sure if this is really required.
Despite autocomplete being a pretty well defined part of the HTML5 spec, Chrome has flip-flopped on how they use the autocomplete property. Originally honoring autocomplete="off" (2013), they then decided that developers must be using it wrong and the browser should just ignore it.
This doesn't mean there aren't very valid cases where you don't want the browser autofilling data (e.g. on CRM systems), but by and large, we see those as the minority cases. And as a result, we started ignoring autocomplete=off for Chrome Autofill data.
(Source: Chromium bug from 2015 marked as WontFix)
According to the Priority of Constituencies:
In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors over specifiers over theoretical purity. In other words costs or difficulties to the user should be given more weight than costs to authors; which in turn should be given more weight than costs to implementors...
...Which leaves us developers in the unfortunate spot of finding a work-around. This article from MDN outlines the current state well, and offers this solution of setting autocomplete to new-password:
If an author would like to prevent the autofilling of password fields in user management pages where a user can specify a new password for someone other than themself, autocomplete="new-password" should be specified, though support for this has not been implemented in all browsers yet.
I'm not sure how long this will remain valid, but for now (tested in Chrome 53 in September 2016) this is the easiest solution:
<input type="password" name="someName" autocomplete="new-password" />
Edit: Note: This has the side-effect of asking the user to save the password, possibly overwriting an existing password. So while it does "prevent the autofilling of password fields" it does not remove the element from the autocomplete mess altogether.
Edit: Updated Info: Newer versions of Chrome once again respect the autocomplete=off attribute, as Alexander Abakumov pointed out in his answer. He had it working for Chrome 68, works on Chrome 70 for me.
autocomplete="off" works now. Tested in the current Chrome 70.0.3538.110.
Demo.
It looks Chrome ignores the autocomplete property for individual inputs; the old work around was to add autocomplete=off on the entire form like you have done (which is a pretty incomplete solution as it will then add this functionality to all inputs contained in the form, which may not be desired).
Anyway, from this post it looks like that work around is no longer available, so it looks like you may need a directive. I know this may not be what you're looking for, but I think it's your only option for chrome.
myApp.directive('autocomplete', function() {
return {
restrict: 'A',
link: function( $scope, el, attr ) {
el.bind('change', function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
}
}
}
});
I've researched it and cannot find a standard, dependable way to make a browser prevent autofill and not remember the password in a standard login form.
This is important to me as I'm working on a mobile web app, so if the user clicks logout and someone else gets hold of their phone, the browser shouldn't help them out by just handing them the password!
The only solution I can come up with is to make the password field type="text".
Sure, this would mean people can 'shoulder surf' and see what the user is typing in, but that same person could almost as easily just watch the user's fingers to see what password they're typing in...
I don't think spyware is a real issue here either, as I don't think a type="password" character mask is going to stop a malicious keylogger, etc. from doing its stuff.
So, I'm wondering if there are any other security concerns that I may have missed for using type="text" for a password field?
Maybe if I combined this idea with a dynamic/random 'name' attribute for the input, could I be onto a winner?
NB - The solution needs to be compliant with XHTML Mobile Profile.
Also, please refrain from advising me on what is semantically correct here. My priority is security, not semantics. :)
Bad idea - The browser will remember text fields, it just wont enter them automatically as it does with passwords. Instead it will suggest the password as an autocomplete for all to see. I also think reading a password over someones shoulder is much easier than reading their keystrokes.
The reason some browsers dont respect the autocomplete option for passwords is probably because passwords are handled by a separate (in theory more secure) method for handling/storing password data - obviously by using a text field you are bypassing this system with whatever risks that entails.
I dont think there is a definitive solution that doesnt involve js, since at the end of the day you have no real control over what their browser remembers. You can only provide hints and suggestions. Which will be handled in different ways by different browsers. Your best bet is to start by adding :
autocomplete="off"
to your form and input. Works in most browsers - but not all.
The above would go in your form tag and your password input tag, something like:
<form id="form1_randomstring" name="form1" method="post" action="process.php" autocomplete="off">
<input name="password_randomstring" type="password" value="">
As you said in your question, randomizing the form and input names will also trick some browsers into thinking it is dealing with a different form
Also, browser will be extra conservative about what they remember if you use ssl. So this may help.
Finally, as another layer of protection you could have a little onload jquery to clear the form field manually on docready:
$("input[type='password']").val('');
Obviously no help if not running js.
The Definitive solution (maybe?)
You could go a step further and inject the form field using an ajax call (plus generating the random form names + autocomplete and serving the page through ssl). Meaning js would be a requirement for logon but you could then make sure the field was clear and generate the form after page load. I would challenge any browser to complete it then.
If you went for that option both the outer page and the ajax loaded page would have to run through ssl - If you didnt want this an alternative might be to load the ssl form through an iframe (again trade-offs -user base would need to be considered.)
Depending on your requirements and userbase, this could present the most guaranteed option.
NOTE
Autocomplete="off" may not pass strict XHTML validation. An option then may be to add the autocomplete attribute after page load with jquery (again, obviously this wont work without js enabled):
$('#form1').attr('autocomplete', 'off');
As an added point, The simplest way to prevent a key logger would be to provide a select option drop down box and ask them to enter a letter/number from their password. Practically speaking you would have to limit passwords to alphanumeric and ask the user to enter at least three letters/numbers from their password in a series of drop downs.
Summary
No perfect solution but lots of options, you'll have to consider what is right for you. I would maybe go for the ajax call as the main method. You could initially load a link to the form and dynamically replace it with the ajax content so that there is still an option for non js users (less users compromised by autocomplete)
My company website, which I develop, requires a login using a form.
Firefox correctly asks for and remembers login details, but test instances of IE6, IE7 do not remember either the username or password, and IE8 will give a dropdown of usernames previously used, but will not remember the password.
What is it about the design of my password form that allows or prevents IE from prompting?
Can I alter the design of my page so IE will remember username/password form data (assuming the user has their preferences set correctly)?
Is there some magic HTML tag, name, or style I should be using?
You might try looking into DOM storage to store username/password persistently on the client side. It'll require JavaScript though and won't work in older versions of IE.
Try adding the site(s) you're trying to access to the "Local Intranet" zone, rather than the "Internet" zone. (assuming this won't cause you security worries)
Tools/Options/Security/Intranet/Sites/Advanced --> add your site(s) here. In my experience, by putting them in the more highly trusted "Intranet" zone my passwords are remembered.
I assume the input box for the password is set as an input type of password?
One thought I had was to explore the naming convention of your form and input fields. Perhaps IE is looking for certain combinations to know that this is a login form that it can offer to save the login credentials for. Also, I have noticed that some web technologies/languages read different elements to get the field names. You might need to set your input fieldnames using both "id" and "name" to get everything to work.
Does your IE remember passwords for other sites than your company website?
Just want to make sure you have not disabled password storage in your IE.