Issue Password strength policy displayed to users does not match the one chosen by admin

[blipp]

Under /admin/server/secure-passwords, I selected the strongest password policy. If I translate it literally from German, it is called “Very Secure”. The description reads as follows (this is in German as my Plesk installation is in German, the translation is rough and made by myself):

Diese Passwörter bestehen aus mindestens 16 Zeichen, wobei Klein- und Großbuchstaben, Ziffern und Sonderzeichen in unterschiedlicher Kombination vorkommen. Beispiel: ~!my_P@$$w0rD123. Solche Passwörter bieten den bestmöglichen Schutz, auch wenn sie schwer zu merken sind.

Passwords consist of at least 16 characters, where lower case and uppercase, numbers and special characters occur in different combinations. Example: ~!my_P@$$w0rD123. Such passwords offer the best protection possible, although they are hard to remember.

When a user proceeds to change their password, for example at /smb/my-profile , they see the following password requirement text after having entered at least one character:

Gemäß der Serverrichtlinie ist die Mindeststärke für Passwörter Sehr sicher. Starke Passwörter müssen mindestens folgende Anforderungen erfüllen: acht Zeichen, ein Groß- oder Kleinbuchstabe, drei Ziffern und ein Sonderzeichen (!, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, ?, _, ~) oder eine Ziffer und zwei Sonderzeichen.

According to the server policy, the minimum strength for passwords is Very Secure. Strong passwords must fulfil at least the following requirements: 8 characters, 1 uppercase or lowercase character, 3 numbers, 1 special character (!, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, ?, _, ~) or 1 number and 2 special characters.

The most obvious difference is that the second one is much more specific, as it explicitly lists which special characters are allowed.

• The most important difference is the required length. The admin requires 16 characters, but the user-facing text says 8.
• The user-facing text uses both “Very Secure” and “Strong”, this seems confusing.
• I think it would be best if the admin-facing text and the user-facing text are the same.
• I think the example password is a bad example – following standard replacement rules, a tool like john the ripper could produce it easily as a candidate. I suggest you use an actually random password, or a diceware password with added special characters.
• In the user-facing interface, I think it would be good to display the password policy immediately and not only after at least one character was entered. Password manager users would like to know as fast as possible what kind of password they need to generate.

Plesk Version is Plesk Obsidian 18.0.35 Update #2.