Flutterby™! : Auth Sucks

I'm having to build a set of normal human facing web interfaces that allow "logging in" in multiple ways, that include the possibility of a person logging in with an email address and password that is on multiple accounts. It's wrong for many many reasons, but for this possible business process flow, it's needed. Normally, I force a 1:1 relationship of the login to the account and use "basic auth" for everything. It sure solves a lot of issues from the programming perspective.

As I do my "updating my thought processes, process" I found a helpful overview of securing sessions with PHP, and as good as it it, it also grates on me how bad authentication is on the web as a whole. Cookies and sessions and encryption and hashes and identity and.. and.. are just intertwined in terribly b0rken and complex ways and we keep breaking the rules to "make it work" and be easier for the end users...