Safe Password Characters for Asp.Net MVC RegEx Validation

Question

What characters are considered safe for passwords in a ASP.NET MVC4 application? And what is the correct way to validate the value? I've been trying to use alphanumeric characters plus several simple characters. Unfortunately, I am running into problems with the RegEx not firing.

The characters I am allowing are:

!@#$%&+

The validation attribute and RegEx I am using is:

[RegularExpression(@"^[a-zA-Z0-9!@#$%&+]*$")]

IMO any character is safe for a password as long as it isn't modified by browsers during the POST method (which as far as I am aware is none). Why? Because most secure systems will store a hashed value, and never display the original value so it doesn't really matter as long as the user can type it. — Erik Philips
– Erik Philips, Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 22:27
I agree that allowing any character in the password is perfectly good, I have found that I get fewer user "password problems" If I strip the trailing whitespace from the password everytime it is entered. If a user does this intentionly, this causes no problems, but since people do see a significance significant different with trailing whitespace, they don't understand why their password is not valid. And AMEN to using a storing salted hash. — Gary Walker
– Gary Walker, Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 22:38
There'll be plenty of users who have awfully simple passwords, but a good number who'll choose, or want to choose, the most obscure characters permissible, and there's no reason not to let them do that. — dyson
– dyson, Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 22:40

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-08 14:08:06Z

2

What characters are considered safe for passwords in a ASP.NET MVC4 application?

All of them.

Do you have a good reason for implementing such a rule?

Encourage your users to choose a long and not-too-complex password. You can give them feedback with a password strength indicator.

While we're talking about password strength, this XKCD comic is relevant:

edited Feb 8, 2017 at 14:08

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answered Apr 30, 2014 at 23:10

Rowan Freeman

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