[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?
This is a piece of tech that has slipped under my radar for a long
time. I've been having my own methods for safe handling of
passwords on the web. Why do people trust password managers?
Author : acadapter
Score : 106 points
Date : 2022-02-17 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
| lmilcin wrote:
| You should not trust password managers with critical stuff.
|
| Even if the product is secure. Even if it actually does end-to-
| end encryption. Even if it is open-source and you can audit code.
|
| Even if all of the above are met, somebody still can upload a
| malicious package or commit malicious change that gets propagated
| to you.
|
| It is probably fine to use password managers for stuff where
| damage would be limited (accounts to low value things).
|
| But for stuff that matters I know of no better system than a
| piece of paper, a tamper evident envelope and a logbook.
| ramses0 wrote:
| https://www.passwordstore.org/
|
| gpg "make-key"
|
| mkdir -p ~/.passwordstore/foo/bar
|
| echo "hunter2\nusername: hunter@hunter.com\n" \ | gpg "sign" >
| ~/.passwordstore/foo/bar/entry.gpg
|
| gpg "decrypt" ~/.passwordstore/foo/bar/entry.gpg
|
| tree ~/.passwordstore/
|
| --
|
| Basically, "passwordstore" is pretty trustworthy, open source,
| reasonably inspectable, and kindof automates the above steps in a
| decent CLI (and has a nice git integration for syncing).
|
| There's another plugin: "password-tomb" which basically adds in a
| "zip -r tomb.zip ~/.passwordstore && unzip tomb.zip" with some
| extra encryption blobbing around things.
|
| I'm nudging towards wanting all that "junk" stored on a mostly-
| offline (or read-only USB, or doing something with fetching
| encrypted secrets over the network), and trying to figure out in
| a temporary ram-disk to try and reduce exposure-time.
|
| The reason it feels pretty good for me is that it degrades
| gracefully and can be used with standard tooling. It's totally
| possible to have a script which does: "foreach password => unlock
| && dump && append-to-pdf && qr-code => print.pdf" and print that
| out at intervals, so it's got great survivability
| characteristics. It allows me to self-host even completely
| offline using git. If I have the GPG key, I can recover the
| passwords w/o any tooling. Really it's kindof my ideal situation
| for trustworthiness.
| qudat wrote:
| I've been using `pass` for years. Yes it's more manual but I'm
| in full control of the password management.
|
| There's also a mobile app for ios and ipad that work just fine,
| including storing OTP.
| remram wrote:
| Is that "sign" supposed to be "encrypt"?
| ramses0 wrote:
| (yep, sorry)
| npteljes wrote:
| Doesn't that 'echo' command go straight to the command history?
| It would reside in ~/.bash_history unencrypted until I type
| 2000 other commands.
| PennRobotics wrote:
| Adding a space before echo will keep the command out of
| .bash_history (if $HISTCONTROL == ignorespace or ignoreboth)
| burntsushi wrote:
| I think it's just an example to give you a conceptual idea of
| what 'pass' is doing under the covers. Of course, using
| 'pass' does not require 'echo'ing your password anywhere.
|
| Tangentially, if you precede a command with a space, then it
| won't show up in your shell history. (Double check to be
| sure, as this is likely a configurable option of your shell.
| e.g., 'histignorespace' in zsh.)
| npteljes wrote:
| I agree with your points, but why showcase a super secure
| system with a flawed example? Also, so many things can go
| wrong with this setup, I'm inclined to think that this is
| one of the upsides of a password manager like KeePass.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| I think you may have focused in on the tangential
| sentence rather than the point about it being a
| conceptual overview with Unix commands being used as a
| metaphor, i.e., not a literal example.
|
| E.g., they're not typing `echo` commands in the same way
| that they're not typing `gpg "make-key"` (which is not a
| real command).
| ramses0 wrote:
| I just see asterisks?
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Is that you, Cthon98?
| harel wrote:
| Start your command with a space to prevent it from reaching
| history
| mdellavo wrote:
| I typically use the generate pass command to generate a new
| password - that isnt in history
| andrecarini wrote:
| You shouldn't [trust SaaS password managers].
|
| Trust local password managers working on local files that are
| synced via Google Drive/Dropbox.
| bananarchist wrote:
| "Should" is an impractical word. "Would" is better.
|
| One would trust a password manager as a result of their obvious
| social media login getting all their friends spammed.
|
| One would trust a password manager as a result of someone finding
| the post it documenting their bank credentials.
|
| One would trust a password manager as a result of missing out on
| an opportunity for forgetting a login and having to wait an
| ungodly number of hours due to an inconveniently timed DNS
| upgrade leading to a long delay in the password rest email's
| arrival.
|
| Nobody trusts password managers because of something essential to
| the password manager or the concept thereof, we trust password
| managers because we have experience or can imagine experiencing
| the fallout of our own credential mismanagement in the face of
| increasingly complex security demands resulting not always
| directly from increasingly sophisticated attacks. It reduces our
| cognitive load slightly and focuses otherwise diffuse anxieties.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I trust my password manager (keepassxc) because
|
| (1) I believe in the fundamental goodness of humans.
|
| (2) I believe that keepassxc being a Free Software, was made with
| honest intentions by competent people.
|
| (3) That human society should be organized on the principle of
| mutual aid, and that involves trusting (initially at least) those
| who say they intend to aid you.
| oblio wrote:
| Even in people are statistically good, there can be anomalies
| and corrupting forces.
|
| But it's true that on some level we need to trust others so
| it's hard to say where to draw the line.
| awill wrote:
| IMO it's strange that people use cloud-based password managers.
| Companies like 1Password have all your passwords in their cloud.
| So they are an enormous target.
|
| I use enpass, and am in charge of my own syncing and storing in
| the datastore of my choice. I personally prefer this model.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| You're right - although you can pick better or worse providers.
| At least 1Password doesn't have a long history of breaches
| (like LastPass lol).
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Because that's literally the entire point of cryptography,
| being able to move secret information across an insecure
| channel.
|
| 1Password (and any other mainstream password manager) has no
| access to your passwords because they're encrypted locally.
| People who go to extreme lengths to keep an encrypted file
| secret practice LARP security.
|
| To preempt the question of "how can you trust them to encrypt
| your stuff though?" The same way you trust Enpass to encrypt
| your stuff, I'd make a guess 99.9% of users have not personally
| audited their code.
| TillE wrote:
| Right, there are two reasons to not trust such a program
| which remotely stores an encrypted blob for you:
|
| 1) Not actually understanding the technology or threat model.
|
| 2) Having incredibly sensitive information which absolutely
| cannot leak even by accident, and needs to be handled
| manually with extreme care. This describes vanishingly few
| practical scenarios.
| dbbk wrote:
| > Companies like 1Password have all your passwords in their
| cloud.
|
| But they are end-to-end encrypted, so if someone broke into
| their database they would be useless unless they also had
| access to your device.
| dustyharddrive wrote:
| At the same time, the native and WebExtension clients are
| proprietary and autoupdate by default. Travel Mode can only
| be accessed by typing your decryption keys into the live
| website (my.1password.com). An infrastructure compromise
| would be even worse than a database dump.
| Ocha wrote:
| source code is not open source so end-to-end encryption might
| not be there when you expect it.
| kerblang wrote:
| If you are concerned about using unfamiliar and complex cloud
| software:
|
| A very reasonable option is ccrypt, which gives you dirt-simple
| command-line password-based encryption for text files (or any
| other files). It's available for most linux distros, cygwin,
| homebrew, etc.
|
| Personally I use my own homemade text editor with built-in
| AES-256 password-based encryption. It's about as trustworthy as I
| am, and a tad more friendly than ccrypt.
|
| In either case cloud storage is easy; for example a github repo
| is nice (preferably a private one) because you have backups
| automatically in case you mess up, which I have done. I don't use
| my phone for critical work in the first place (can't trust 'em)
| so I'm not worried about integrating that.
| downsplat wrote:
| I trust a local password manager, namely KeepassX running on my
| linux laptop. It's an open source dedicated piece of tech running
| on the local box, so I figure my trust model extends at least
| this far.
|
| Otherwise, no, I wouldn't trust a commercial password manager
| with automatic sync on to someone else's servers. I also don't
| trust the browser enough to put an extension in it that has the
| keys to my password database.
|
| It's a tradeoff. I get a nice level of security, but it's not
| 100% seamless. Without autofill, I often need to start up the
| password manager, search for a site, copy and paste password into
| the browser. (I just had to do this to log into HN.)
|
| For some sites, I let the browser also save the password, which I
| treat as just a cache of low-value passwords. And the encrypted
| password manager database gets occasionally synched into gdrive,
| so I can also access it from my smartphone using the appropriate
| app.
|
| Been doing this for 5+ years at this point, and it _works for
| me_... can 't even remember what on earth I did before. Probably
| passwords in tiny plain text files.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| I self-host Vaultwarden[1] on a $6/mo DigitalOcean droplet. It
| took awhile to set up, but I know that I control the data, the
| backups, and the security. I made this decision after trying
| LastPass, which turned out to be a buggy piece of shit.
|
| [1] https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
| prophesi wrote:
| It sounds like to me that there are three types of people:
|
| * Layman who reuses passwords unless a techie friend convinces
| them to use a PW manager.
|
| * HN user who either uses a SAAS password manager or sets up
| their own system to solve the issue of syncing a password store
| across devices.
|
| * Those who actually have state level secrets or living under an
| oppressive regime and thereby don't trust even the networks they
| connect to.
|
| Just an observation; not making any statements. But if I were to
| make one, it's to know your own threat level and find the
| security vs convenience compromise that works for you, and
| educate your friends & family.
| stepchowfun wrote:
| I sort of fall into the second category, except I don't sync
| passwords across devices or even store them at all. I generate
| them on the fly with [1].
|
| [1]
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hashpass/gkmegkoip...
| u2077 wrote:
| Having an algorithm (especially one that is publicly
| available) to generate passwords is not as secure as unique
| passwords for each service. For example, we now know that you
| 1) use this extension, and 2) have a HN account. We can now
| start brute-forcing your password for HN.
| prophesi wrote:
| It uses a master password to generate these passwords, so I
| actually think you wouldn't be brute-forcing their HN
| password that way but the master password itself. If you
| crack one entry, that means you've found the password
| they're using to generate all of the others.
|
| Note that regular password managers also have a master
| password people can try to brute force, so I actually think
| this algorithmic method is technically more secure since
| there's no need to trust a third party to manage the
| password store, while still having the other flaws that
| traditional PW managers have.
| jaguar1878 wrote:
| How does this work with sites that have absurdly strict
| password requirements? i.e. 8-16 characters, 3+ letters (1+
| of which is upper case), 2+ numbers, 1+ special characters
| (from their curated list only!) I've seen a few financial
| related sites have requirements like these, and with a
| typical password generator I can just click 'generate' until
| one pops out that meets the reqs, and save it.
| getcrunk wrote:
| Does this have an option to use multiple master passwords?
| For example accounts 0-10 use password x and 10-20 use
| password y?
| foxfluff wrote:
| * HN user who doesn't use a password manager and doesn't sync
| passwords across devices and doesn't reuse passwords (except on
| throwaway accounts)
| prophesi wrote:
| Though I would argue that's still setting up your own system
| to solve the issue of syncing passwords. Whether that be
| creating your own algorithm to "generate" passwords you can
| remember or reproduce, keeping them in a notebook, etc.
| chromanoid wrote:
| I once got an account hacked because I reused a password. Since
| then I only generate passwords and use a SaaS password manager. I
| got informed about leaked passwords multiple times by the service
| which saved me time and maybe even money.
|
| Managing them in the cloud is the easiest way to keep the
| passwords with me. I trust those services because I am lazy, my
| own solution would just be obscure and self-managed solutions
| would probably give me headaches in multi-device or multi-user
| scenarios (I share many passwords with my wife).
|
| With a payed subscription SaaS solution I can expect that the
| provider has a huge interest in keeping my data safe from
| criminals. It's their biggest selling point.
| nor-and-or-not wrote:
| I use pass[1], which is a command line tool to store gpg
| encrypted passwords in a local git repo.
|
| I share the git repos between different machines using my own
| servers. All remote mirrors are synced over SSH using git-remote-
| crypt[2], which additionally encrypts all remotely stored files -
| including the metadata (e.g. paths and file names of the files)
| of the remote git repo itself.
|
| On mobile I like to torture myself and enter the passwords
| manually.
|
| I definitely wouldn't trust any SaaS password manager.
|
| [1] https://www.passwordstore.org/ [2]
| https://spwhitton.name/tech/code/git-remote-gcrypt/
| fugalfervor wrote:
| Pass will generate QR codes for you, which is much easier than
| typing the passwords manually. But you have the trust the QR
| code software and the system clipboard, which is up to you to
| decide.
|
| I really like pass because the source code is short enough, and
| simple enough, to verify its security to one's own
| satisfaction.
| nor-and-or-not wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning. I haven't tried that, yet.
|
| Yes, that was my reason to settle on pass as well. Plus it
| has a healthy community discussing in the mailing list and
| also many eyes looking at the source.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > I've been having my own methods for safe handling of passwords
| on the web.
|
| I use a local password manager, KeePass: https://keepass.info/
|
| It's probably the only good middle ground for keeping track of
| passwords, SSH certificates and other data: a password protected
| local database that i can move to USB sticks or SD cards for
| backups, or keep inside of an encrypted 7z archive, or a
| VeraCrypt file if i cared that much.
|
| You not only get to have a simple way to use it (it's just a file
| that's compatible with the software, like SQLite is also really
| easy to use), but also get to pick where/how you want to store
| that data in an easy to understand manner.
|
| Right now it's great for all of my vaguely relevant access
| credentials, from numerous e-mail accounts, to online shopping
| accounts, to even access data for online platforms, hosting
| solutions, servers etc. with as many separate databases as i
| choose.
|
| In my eyes, it's also really great for letting you randomly
| generate secure passwords - i don't know almost any of the non-
| essential service passwords and because it's so easy to generate
| new ones for accounts, i'm not plagued by "password-reuse-itis"
| either. When coupled with 2FA, it's pretty decent from a security
| standpoint.
|
| It also has a clearly understandable attack surface - infected
| password manager binaries, stealing passwords when in memory or
| malware on the system (like keyloggers, clipboard watchers),
| someone stealing the database AND the master password, asking me
| nicely for it with a 5$ wrench: https://xkcd.com/538/
|
| For why people use web based ones which aren't so clearly
| understood or dependable (your list of risks would be a lot
| longer with those), i'm not sure. It's probably just convenience.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| I run a self-hosted instance of a Bitwarden compatible server.
| It's only available locally on my local network. So, when out and
| about, I VPN back home.
|
| Not sure it's the best way to do it, security wise, but it's what
| I found works for me in a security/convenience trade-off
| kutenai wrote:
| You don't "send" your password to the manager, you enter it
| locally. Ideally, it never leaves your computer, so it is far
| less likely to 'leak'
|
| The database is encrypted, so if someone were to hack them, they
| would at least have some (hopefully major) issues decrypting it
| all.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A password manager creates a single point of failure of all your
| passwords.
|
| Nope.
| zaik wrote:
| Do you have an unique password for every website? Are they
| strong passwords? How do you remember them?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yes. Yes. My secret. (There are many ways to do it, I'm just
| not going to broadcast what I do.)
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I don't trust or use SAAS password managers. They are massive
| honeypots just waiting to be pwned and everyones' passwords to
| all their websites stolen. They have above average security, but
| unlike a typical website they can't just store a one-way hash of
| passwords that remains secure even when stolen, they have to
| store the actual password.
|
| I imagine nation state-supported malicious hackers are targeting
| them. Everything else is getting breached and leaked these days,
| there's a non-trivial possibility these will too.
|
| I just use KeePassXC instead, and periodically 'sync' the
| database across my workstations and laptop. And by 'sync', I mean
| manually export the database and rsync it around to my
| workstations and laptop and re-import it on each. But given how
| infrequently I create new web accounts, this isn't a major
| hassle. It works fine, I don't need some centralized service for
| this.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Not sure if this helps or hurts, but the places they're most
| likely to see a problem are in the clients and automatic
| browser plugin updates. An attacker doesn't even need to target
| a password manager directly; they can collect passwords pretty
| well with any compromised plugin, just not all of the passwords
| at once.
| DougN7 wrote:
| I do the same thing but worry about a nation state or rich
| enough hackers to just take over the project and add nefarious
| code. I'll never audit the code and make sure it produces the
| binary I get from the Apple store. So I've started adding my
| own "salt" - I type an extra character or two (same for all
| passwords) to the end of every password I enter. It's the
| easiest way to protect against not being able to trust my local
| password app that I can think off.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| If the hacker can decrypt your whole password safe and view
| all your plaintext passwords, I think they'll work out your
| scheme.
| fuzzieozzie wrote:
| I am the same, but with the enhancement of using Resilio Sync
| to automatically sync the file between devices.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| I do the same, with Nextcloud though, but I doubt SkyMarshal
| would consider that as an enhancement. He, and others, sync
| it manually and "offline" for security reasons.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| You can use any kind of sync software you prefer, be it
| cloud-based or local LAN-only. At least with cloud-based
| it's not a glaringly visible honeypot with a huge target
| painted on it.
|
| Setting up local automated sync is on my todo list, it's
| just lower priority than too many other things. As I
| mentioned, I don't create new accounts so often that I need
| automated sync.
| PinguTS wrote:
| For that reason I trust 1Password in the non-SAAS version. The
| password vault is stored locally and then snchronized between
| devices via iCloud. So there is no single point. First there
| needs to be an exploit for iCloud and second to the 1Password
| vault. The benefit of this is, the vault is a simple website by
| itself that can be loaded into any webbrowser without the app.
| wtf77 wrote:
| Same here. KeePassXC, sync manually and backup it manually. I
| don't trust SaaS as well.
| jedberg wrote:
| You could use Syncthing so you don't have to manually sync
| and backup nor trust any SaaS
| giuliogabrieli wrote:
| I add on KeepassXC, synched to one of my cloud storage in the
| background with a decently misleading name and in a
| misleading folder.
| a1445c8b wrote:
| So...security by obscurity.
| playpause wrote:
| Nothing wrong with security through obscurity as an extra
| layer on top of encryption.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > they can't just store a one-way hash of passwords that
| remains secure even when stolen, they have to store the actual
| password
|
| Maybe I'm missing something but sure they can't store its hash
| but they can and do store the password strongly encrypted.
| Presumably without the master password, at least, it should be
| close to impossible to retrieve the passwords. Or is that
| assumption wrong?
| booi wrote:
| That's exactly what they do and they have the audits[0][1] to
| prove it.
|
| [0] https://support.1password.com/security-assessments/ [1]
| https://bitwarden.com/images/resources/Bitwarden-Security-
| As...
| ryandvm wrote:
| That is correct and they apparently have the audits to prove
| it.
|
| That said, it's not bulletproof. The chink in the armor is
| the browser extensions they all use. All it would take is
| somebody to slip some trojan code into one of the browser
| extensions and all of the sudden you have a few hundred
| million decrypted password databases which could trivially be
| uploaded to wherever.
| kevindong wrote:
| Could you not argue the same thing for almost any code used
| by almost any piece of software closer to the metal?
|
| e.g. someone manages to slip malicious code into
| Chrome/Chromium which eventually makes its way out to every
| Electron app/most browsers, or something gets injected into
| Windows/macOS/Linux, etc.
| dogman144 wrote:
| On one hand, yes software supply chain vulns are getting
| difficult to maintain conceptually total coverage of
| while also maintaining a pleasant environment for
| developers to productive in.
|
| On the other hand, yes there eventually is a trust point
| somewhere. A spiral of upstream what-ifs isn't productive
| IMO, I agree.
| dataflow wrote:
| The likelihood of malicious code making its way into a
| browser extension in production is way, WAY higher than
| it is for something like Chrome or Windows.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Could you not argue the same thing for almost any code
| used by almost any piece of software closer to the
| metal?_
|
| You could. But if you haven't trusted all/most of your
| passwords to any single app, you wont have a problem with
| them being exposed when that particular piece of software
| is compromised.
|
| Even if someone compromises your OS itself, you'll only
| lose the passwords you typed in while you were using it
| compromised. And that's if it does captures thoses, and
| if it sends them to some remote endpoint, and if it's not
| caught soon, and so on.
|
| With a password manager compromised, on the other hand,
| you could loose anything you've put it in, all at once.
| oblio wrote:
| Mobile devices?
| xblau wrote:
| On Android you can use Keepass2Android[0] to open your
| KeePass files. You still have to copy your kdbx file to your
| phone somehow, of course.
|
| [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=keepass2and
| roi...
| kabr wrote:
| Resilio Sync + Keepass2Android or Keepass Touch (iOS)
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| For what it's worth, 1Password has a longstanding $100k bounty
| for capturing a flag inside a publicly available encrypted
| vault.
|
| https://bugcrowd.com/agilebits
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I suspect that's not nearly enough, given that their breached
| database would probably sell for multiple orders of magnitude
| more on the darknet. Should probably be $1M at least.
| jolux wrote:
| 1Password vaults are encrypted end-to-end, their database
| would not be worth nearly that much. It's a bunch of
| worthless data. A successful hack of 1Password would
| probably require pushing bad client updates.
|
| Besides which bug bounties are not really intended to
| disincentivize people from committing crimes, they're
| intended to incentivize researchers to report findings and
| reward them for their efforts.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Parent comment is right about the value of a successful
| vault exploit. Given the number of people and companies
| using 1Password now, $100k would likely pale in
| comparison to an exploit's value on the black market.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _1Password vaults are encrypted end-to-end, their
| database would not be worth nearly that much. It 's a
| bunch of worthless data._
|
| Doesn't matter for our case, since it already assumes the
| database potentially compromisable. The parent's comment
| concerned whether the "bounty for capturing a flag inside
| a publicly available encrypted vault" is enough. So the
| question is not whether the bounty is enough given it's
| impossible to win, but whether it's enough given it might
| be possible to win.
|
| In other words, whether someone who finds an exploit to
| decrypt the vaults contents would get a better value by
| (a) revealing it to 1Password company and taking the
| $100K bounty, or (b) selling the exploit to people who
| would give millions to be able to decrypt other's
| vaults...
| [deleted]
| steelstraw wrote:
| That is terribly low for such a critical issue. There are
| Ethereum L2s that pay out $2M bounties.
|
| https://twitter.com/saurik/status/1491821215924690950
| dogman144 wrote:
| That's a bad analogy, although you point out a possibly
| good thing for L2/crypto - the bug bounties are massive
| because the projects have a silly amount of funds.
|
| Password managers don't operate with those economic models
| though.
| steelstraw wrote:
| 1Password has raised almost $1B. Surely they could put at
| least $1M toward a critical bounty?
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Agreed!
|
| In fact, I'd argue that, if they are positing that the
| reputational risk for a successful hack exceeds 10% of
| their notional valuation, then they should try to commit
| at least 10% of their market cap as insurance against
| that ever happening, or at least if they would gain
| enough information to prevent this from ever occurring.
| This isn't that hard to figure out.
|
| The best thing about that insurance is that it's
| literally free -- they never have to pay out unless the
| event actually occurs.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Depends on the cost/benefit. 3x security engineers to
| detect/respond vulns and attacks is less expensive but
| gets similar coverage plus a lot of other work capacity,
| for instance.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| What cost? There is _literally_ zero cost.
|
| Unless a successful attack actually occurs, in which case
| it's _literally_ almost priceless in terms of their
| reputational damage, unless they can get their hands on
| it before someone else.
| andrecarini wrote:
| 1M allocated to this bug bounty is 1M not spent if their
| security is strong enough.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Password managers unlock hot wallets, and much more
| besides.
| slooonz wrote:
| > They have above average security, but unlike a typical
| website they can't just store a one-way hash of passwords that
| remains secure even when stolen, they have to store the actual
| password
|
| No, they don't store directly the actual password, they store
| it encrypted by a encryption key derived from your master
| password. A leak of the database won't reveal any password, as
| long as your master password stays secure (aka is not
| "hunter3")
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> as long as your master password stays secure (aka is not
| "hunter3")_
|
| You mean, the master password that many people reuse across
| sites and has been leaked into the darknet by breaches of
| other sites? Or if not leaked directly, at least some entropy
| about it probably has been.
|
| I know these services don't store the password in plain text,
| but it's still stored in reversible format. That's a juicy
| target.
| dogman144 wrote:
| What sources do you have that indicate master pws in the pw
| manager context are getting leaked or reused?
| ejb999 wrote:
| you don't really need a 'source' for that do you? - it's
| common knowledge that people reuse passwords across
| sites. It's not best practice for sure, but plenty of
| people do it. If some low quality site leaks your email
| and password and if you were dumb enough to use that as
| your master password for your password manage, you are at
| more risk than if the bad actor didn't have that
| information.
| jolux wrote:
| You can check this fairly easily with
| https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords. It's not exhaustive
| obviously but it's something.
|
| 1Password vaults are also encrypted with a separate secret
| key that is generated locally and never stored. So you'd
| need the password and the secret key to decrypt.
| leokennis wrote:
| Do you understand the concept of a password manager?
|
| You only have to remember one password, and for that reason
| people can choose a longer and more complex one.
|
| Then your passwords are encrypted using that master
| password.
|
| So people cannot "reverse" your password if you pick a
| reasonably long master password.
|
| For reference, my master password is a 27 character
| sentence which would take somewhere between a millennium
| and the heat death of the universe to crack. It encrypts
| around 500 passwords, each in itself 25-35 character long
| pass phrases I do not know.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| This kind of dependence sometimes scares me to be honest,
| not that password dependent services have left much
| choice to us.
| leokennis wrote:
| I store the printed credentials to my password manager
| and my e-mail account in a safe deposit box (without
| mentioning on that paper what the codes are for).
|
| Then I store a YubiKey which is a second factor to these
| accounts in another safe deposit box in another location.
|
| So should I forget my master password: drive to box 1.
|
| Should my house with all my computers burn down: drive to
| boxes 1 and 2, find a pc or phone somewhere, and I have
| access to all my accounts.
|
| Should my password manager go bankrupt overnight and take
| my vault with them: drive to boxes 1 and 2, then click
| "forgot my password" on all services and use my e-mail to
| recover access.
|
| Should my password manager go bankrupt overnight and take
| my vault with them, my e-mail provider go bankrupt
| overnight and take my mailbox with them: at least I have
| my own e-mail domain, so I can set up a new mailbox
| elsewhere
|
| Should my password manager go bankrupt overnight and take
| my vault with them, my e-mail provider go bankrupt
| overnight and take my mailbox with them, and my domain
| registrar go bankrupt overnight and take my domain with
| them: yeah...then I'm screwed. I'll migrate to a wooded
| country and become a hermit.
| whymarrh wrote:
| Even if your Master Password is "hunter3", 1Password, as an
| example, will mix in a locally generated Secret Key to
| increase the entropy [1]
|
| [1]: https://blog.1password.com/what-the-secret-key-does/
| balaji1 wrote:
| for the N number of websites that force me to create accounts,
| I use an auto-generated password from the password manager and
| save to the same SaaS password manager. These are for websites
| I don't care if the passwords get leaked, I can live with the
| damage. Some have access to credit cards, but meh.
|
| For the old-school (am I young?) websites like mail, fb, bank
| accounts, etc I remember the passwords.
|
| Seems like a workable compromise for now. Tho I am scared I
| will start getting lazy and start storing sensitive websites in
| pwd managers.
| ausbah wrote:
| I trust a centralized solution more than anything I could do
| myself, plus the convenience ig
| 0xTJ wrote:
| What other option is there? When you've got over a hundred
| different random passwords, at some point you've got to manage
| those, so you use a manager.
|
| Though I would never recommend a service-based one, just use
| something like KeePass and sync that file.
| everydayDonut wrote:
| Why do people use paid password managers when you can just use
| firefox's?
| bussierem wrote:
| Because my paid Bitwarden account works for every single device
| I own, for every app I use, for every website I visit, and for
| every browser that supports plugins. I can host it myself if I
| need to. I can have a family account to let my wife login and
| have her own separate passwords on the same sites as me. I can
| tag and sort and regenerate my passwords seamlessly. I don't
| have to come up with my own passwords constantly -- just click
| a few buttons to generate one within the current site's
| requirements, and hit "save".
| dusted wrote:
| I really don't know. I barely trust the one I built myself,
| especially for the automatic, cloud based ones, I just don't
| know.
| mlsmith wrote:
| I might be minority here, but I prefer Bitwarden because of it's
| seamless ability to sync passwords with my wife. There's no way
| she's going to use something complicated or non-intuitive and she
| mostly uses iOS. We have nothing to hide from each other so all
| of our passwords are in the same vault. We also use the secure
| notes functionality to lookup important family info.
| t-3 wrote:
| It's a convenience vs. security tradeoff. The fact is, most
| people can afford to adopt a flawed security model to give
| themselves greater convenience, because most people aren't being
| specifically targeted and attacked. I doubt many people realize
| that they are making such a tradeoff, but that's more about
| dishonest advertising...
| tuckerman wrote:
| I guess password managers seem like one of those few decisions
| that made my life both more convenient and more secure (after
| the initial adoption).
|
| Out of curiosity, what could one use instead of a password
| manager that would be closer to the "more secure" side of
| things in your opinion?
| warp wrote:
| You could use a different password for each service and just
| write them in a paper notebook.
|
| Paper is generally not susceptible to malware or other ways
| passwords can leak from a local or hosted password manager.
| jreese wrote:
| But now your password manager (notebook) is vulnerable to
| fire and water damage, with no backup or recovery options.
| xenocratus wrote:
| And also if you ever need to access anything on-the-go,
| you either can't or have to keep the notebook with you
| and make it susceptible to the things you mentioned +
| theft or snooping.
| Froedlich wrote:
| I use a copy machine to back up my password list. The
| pages go in my fire safe with other important papers, and
| a second copy off-site.
|
| I guess you could just take pictures of the pages and
| save them to a thumbdrive or an SDcard, but I prefer the
| lower-tech solution.
| ams92 wrote:
| You can't possibly believe that this is a viable
| alternative.
| rgoulter wrote:
| > what could one use instead of a password manager
|
| The comment you're replying to mentions "dishonest
| advertising", which suggests "password manager service".
|
| I'd think using e.g. KeepassXC would be more secure (but less
| convenient) than this, since I manage where the password
| database is stored/accessed.
| dbbk wrote:
| It's less flawed than relying on a low-strength memorable
| password that's reused across all services. Having a uniquely
| generated, random password for each service that gets
| autofilled by the password manager is much more secure.
| mstef wrote:
| i am the author of a password manager which you don't have to
| trust: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/blog/posts/sphinx.html
| ciphol wrote:
| Why are people talking like the choice is between cloud password
| managers (potentially insecure) and no password manager
| (impractical unless you reuse passwords)? There's a third option
| - a local password manager like the one built into your browser.
| Its one disadvantage versus the cloud is that you have to reenter
| your password on each of your devices. For normal people who have
| maybe 2 or 3 devices and don't change their passwords very often,
| this is a trivial obstacle.
| TillE wrote:
| A local password manager becomes a "cloud" one trivially if you
| just stick the database file on a synced drive. You don't have
| to trust the drive's host at all since it's just an encrypted
| blob.
|
| KeePass makes this easy, at least in theory, though I was never
| happy with the phone app.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Because my passwords are stored in the cloud but they are only
| decrypted on my PC. If a nation state or another attacker gets
| into the password manager I use, they have my encrypted passwords
| just the same as if they rooted some Linux box I have an account
| on. The stakes are roughly the same.
|
| A passsword manager (PM) makes random passwords easier. A PM
| keeps me from re-using passwords. A PM gives me a relatively
| secure place to store vital information, and it also lets me use
| it on multiple computers and stays in sync.
|
| Do I trust them implicitly with everything? No. That would be
| foolish. It's a calculated risk, and the benefits outweigh the
| risks.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > they are only decrypted on my PC.
|
| The point is, why do you believe it's true?
| mp3il wrote:
| Because you can see their source code and monitor the network
| requests when using them...?
| TillE wrote:
| Why do you trust any software running on your computer? Your
| password manager is no more likely to have a malicious
| backdoor than any other program.
| aborsy wrote:
| It's more likely indeed. Nobody cares about my editor.
| simonw wrote:
| Because if 1Password (to pick an example) were to be found to
| NOT be using encryption sensibly, the bad publicity would
| likely sink their company.
|
| Security researchers pay a lot of attention to password
| managers.
| auslegung wrote:
| You need a unique, strong password for every service. Humans are
| bad at creating unique passwords and bad at memorizing hundreds
| of unique passwords. Machines are good at both of these. So why
| would you trust your methods?
| jviotti wrote:
| You don't need to trust them. I use "pass"
| (https://www.passwordstore.org), a simple CLI password manager
| that operates using a GPG key you control (which I have on a
| Yubikey). Then, you can upload the GPG-encrypted password store
| wherever your want in order to sync-up your passwords.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Everything is a risk reward calculation.
|
| Convenience vs security.
|
| The balance i struck with a self hosted instance of bitwarden has
| been good for me.
|
| I run it.
|
| It's open source
|
| It's third party audited
|
| Company has a good history generating trust
|
| Did I mention I host it?
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Keepass is offline, opensource and quite simple: an encrypted
| list of passwords you can open and copy&paste from. No lock-in,
| easy backups, simple threat scenario and hence easy to trust.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I'm very low tech : I use a small paper notebook (see link below,
| I don't know the proper term in English). It's absolutely
| unhackable unless someone breaks in my house which I'm not too
| much concerned for (my security profile is "random Joe").
|
| I would not trust something in the cloud.
|
| But at one point you have to trust something, learn to let go or
| do without.
|
| I'm too lazy to work on the "memory palace" thing, but it might
| be the best solution: portable, secure, free.
|
| https://media.cultura.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/imag...
| SloopJon wrote:
| This question is incomplete without expanding on your "methods
| for safe handling of passwords on the web." Tell us what those
| methods are, and you'll get some thoughts on whether you should
| or shouldn't trust them.
|
| Password manager anxiety is a thing. Maybe you're worried that
| you'll lose the vault, or that it will be hacked. I didn't like
| the idea that I couldn't log into something without it. The
| problem is, without a password manager, my passwords sucked. I
| had a core secret that I sort of salted for each site.
|
| So my reason for using a password manager (KeePassXC with
| SyncThing, if you're interested) is that it's better than the
| alternative.
| getcrunk wrote:
| Personally, I use pwd managers as a convenience thing. My main
| accounts (bank, email, git, domain, or any other admin lvl thing)
| I either memorize or write down irl and use 2fa. Other than that
| yea I use password managers with the acknowledgement that it may
| get hacked but so would I at any point too.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| Something I've not seen come up yet: a password manager that's
| integrated with your browser is a good defence against phishing.
|
| Because it'll only offer passwords for sites that match the
| entry, defaulting (most often) to being the same domain, if you
| come across a phish then it won't offer the site at all. This is
| fairly similar to the "trust on first use" that SSH gives you,
| which some folk were wishing might have existed for SSL
| certificates the other day.
|
| Unfortunately some sites require you to "log in with your ...
| credentials" rather than doing SSO. But you TOFU those, too, once
| you've verified they're legit.
|
| Happy Bitwarden user here: the software is all Free, but I trust
| the company to run their servers securely more than I trust
| myself to, so I pay them to do so. Extra benefit: if I lose all
| my infrastructure, I haven't lost my passwords.
| cheald wrote:
| > which some folk were wishing might have existed for SSL
| certificates the other day
|
| Isn't this basically what HSTS + cert pinning does?
| diarrhea wrote:
| > Extra benefit: if I lose all my infrastructure, I haven't
| lost my passwords.
|
| I just dump the SQL database of Vaultwarden and have that as a
| backup (it's encrypted). I've verified that a new Vaultwarden
| instance can be spun up on any Docker-capable machine quickly,
| the SQL file just needs to be mounted in and named properly. So
| it's a very localhost-friendly backup with no 'infrastructure'
| requirements. It can be up in minutes.
| kgc wrote:
| 1password does this unless I'm misunderstanding your post.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| Yes! As far as I'm aware the "cloudy" password managers all
| do it.
| a1445c8b wrote:
| > Because it'll only offer passwords for sites that match the
| entry, defaulting (most often) to being the same domain, if you
| come across a phish then it won't offer the site at all.
|
| 1Password does this.
| max1cc wrote:
| It also warns if you try to fill on a site that isn't linked
| (says something like "1Password can't verify that
| reaibank.com should use your realbank.com login"
| hughrr wrote:
| Apple keychain?
| andrewaylett wrote:
| If I were an Apple ecosystem person, certainly.
| makeworld wrote:
| > Because it'll only offer passwords for sites that match the
| entry, defaulting (most often) to being the same domain, if you
| come across a phish then it won't offer the site at all.
|
| The Bitwarden browser extension does this. When you add a
| login, it also adds the URI of the website, so the login info
| and auto-fill will only show up when you're on the same domain.
| Of course you can edit and add or remove your own URIs for
| logins. You can also change the URI matching behaviour.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| Yes, and this is what I use.
| mdellavo wrote:
| browserpass for the pass password manager does this
| reedjosh wrote:
| I agree with everything you've written here, but while all good
| points, they're really more about convenience -- not trust.
|
| _Why_ do you trust Bitwarden?
|
| I also use BW btw, but I don't have a good reason as to why
| they're trustworthy, and will probably run my own server
| someday.
| kevincox wrote:
| I would argue it is trust. I trust my password manager to
| validate the website I am entering my password into more than
| I trust my eyes. I know that I can't be perfectly vigilant
| every single time I enter my password. The risk of the
| password manager betraying me is roughly an order of
| magnitude below the risk of my falling for a phishing attack.
|
| Plus I use the password manager baked into my browser, so I'm
| basically trusting it anyways.
| tobylane wrote:
| Because it's a crime for them to make use of the passwords,
| and I'd be able to claim back any financial loss.
|
| I picked Bitwarden because it's widely trusted, it's trusted
| because it's open source and widely assumed to be casually
| audited by many _other_ people. There's a weak point here in
| how many of us are relying on others to do the audit, in a
| bystander effect sense. I don't think either of these are BW
| specific, which just shows there's a large family of wise
| options.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| If I'm accessing my passwords via the clients that BitWarden
| the company distributes, then I'm still putting my trust in
| the company. Where the encrypted data is stored is in many
| ways less important.
|
| And the irony is that the _one_ website I can 't trust my
| password manager to protect me from phishing attacks on is
| the password manager's own web interface. So I always want to
| log in with one of the non-web clients, and only trust the
| web vault if I reached it via a known-good link (like the one
| in the settings panel of the browser addon and mobile apps).
| antihero wrote:
| I trust it (in my case 1Password) because it's a company that
| happily makes money from that trust, and if were to be
| insecure or the trust wantonly breached, they would cease to
| exist. Their motivations align with what I want them to be.
| fsflover wrote:
| > because it's a company that happily makes money from that
| trust
|
| You could also say this about Microsoft, except they've
| been breaking such trust for a long time.
| rewgs wrote:
| That's a pretty obviously bad take. You're comparing a
| company whose single product is about keeping one kind of
| thing secure, and another company that makes dozens of
| products, most of which don't explicitly have to do with
| security.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| I'm not an expert by any means but I have a layman sense
| that keeping Windows safe is a way more gargantuan task
| than keeping an encrypted vault safe inside my computer
| (before 1password moved to this cloud nonsense to milk
| subscription money).
|
| If my windows is compromised no amount of tech wizardry
| can protect my 1password credentials.
| oezi wrote:
| My biggest fear with a local password manager is a keylogger
| stealing the master password. I wished local password managers
| had a way that they would only disclose a single password when
| using a yubikey rather than opening/decrypting the whole vault.
| n4bz0r wrote:
| Don't know about other managers, but in Keepass you can use key
| file [0][1] alongside master password.
|
| There is also an option to lock the db behind a Windows account
| [2]. Not sure if it's a good idea, though.
|
| > One master password decrypts the complete database.
|
| > Alternatively you can use key files. Key files provide better
| security than master passwords in most cases. You only have to
| carry the key file with you, for example on a floppy disk, USB
| stick, or you can burn it onto a CD. Of course, you shouldn't
| lose this disk then.
|
| > For even more security you can combine the above two methods:
| the database then requires the key file and the password in
| order to be unlocked. Even if you lose your key file, the
| database would remain secure.
|
| [0]: https://keepass.info/features.html#lnkkeys
|
| [1]: https://keepass.info/help/base/keys.html
|
| [2]: https://keepass.info/help/base/keys.html#winuser
| tw600040 wrote:
| Well, if one's using a Mac and iCloud one already trusts Apple.
| so no additional trust needed to use iCloud Keychain I guess.
| alliao wrote:
| not wise. you're giving apple way too much power over you.
| imagine if your account is revoked one day.
| tw600040 wrote:
| That's why I like Apple's approach of local backups. Nothing
| is exclusively in the cloud alone, it's only backed up to
| cloud. Everything I care about, I can access it locally with
| no internet, including all old photos, files, chats, mails,
| passwords pretty much everything.
| drivebycomment wrote:
| Why do you trust your cpu, firmware, OS, and all the layers of
| code then ?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Because if you don't use one, you'll almost certainly instead
| either reuse passwords across sites, store passwords insecurely,
| or choose weak passwords.
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| In my opinion, storing passwords in encrypted files is probably
| safer than putting passwords in a centralized location
| (provided you don't code your own encryption algo or make other
| silly mistakes).
|
| There is not a lot of value in trying to attack a single
| person's password file, but the value is multiplied by the
| number of users when using a centralized platform.
| agotterer wrote:
| I use https://git-secret.io for this. But it's not user
| friendly enough to be used for everyday web browsing and
| account access. I personally use it to store things like root
| passwords or reset tokens, which I very rarely access.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > storing passwords in encrypted files is probably safer
|
| That is too hard or tedious for most people. Syncing is a
| pain, and doesn't autofill on websites or in apps.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| One feature of 1Password (and other password managers with
| browser integration) that has saved me at least twice by now:
| The browser extensions will autofill only for matching
| domains. If autofill doesn't work on a site I have
| credentials in 1Password for, chances are it's a phishing
| attack. That's a last line of defence against well-crafted
| phishing attacks that I wouldn't want to give up.
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _storing passwords in encrypted files_
|
| Which you almost certainly access with some kind of software,
| yes?
|
| A password manager is just a piece of software that stores
| passwords in encrypted files, and makes it more convenient to
| edit them, associate them with a website, use them to log in,
| check them against known breaches, etc.
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| I think local open source password management software that
| you run on your machine are more trustable and less likely
| to be the subject of a big targeted attack than a cloud
| tool. So just to be clear, I am not advocating against
| Keepass or similar, only web tools with thousands of users.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Fair. I moved from 1Password to Enpass when the former
| started pushing cloud big time.
|
| Enpass isn't open source but it's open... implementation
| details? There isn't a formal spec or standard but they
| were very forthcoming about how their encrypted SQLite
| implementation works and there are now open source third-
| party CLIs for it. https://github.com/hazcod/enpass-cli
| ejb999 wrote:
| I am in the minority I know, but I don't trust them.
| Shank wrote:
| So, I think in-general, the answer is that for a question like
| this, you need to start from doing threat modelling, and work
| outward. Threat modelling is the first step that must be
| conducted, and then you can find solutions that fit your needs
| from that.
|
| For most people, the biggest threats that come from passwords
| are: data breaches (compromising reused passwords), human memory
| limits (you can't remember high entropy passwords easily, in
| general), and an ever-increasing demand for both high quality
| passwords and unique passwords.
|
| If you look at these threats from the perspective of most people,
| a password manager works well! You don't have to worry about
| breaches, memory limits, or even password generation. You can
| just generate-and-store random passwords for every site that
| meets their requirements, and walk away.
|
| But that doesn't mean that that's the end of threat modeling.
| Other risks that you're probably thinking of are the security of
| the cryptosystem involved, bugs in the application, and fear of
| backdoors. These are valid threats, but for the vast majority of
| people, they're mitigated by other reasons, or are non-factors.
|
| To give an example: a password manager that most cryptographers
| would laugh at is writing your passwords on a sticky note. Yes,
| that's bad from a cryptography standpoint, but if you make a new
| unique password for each site, and each one is sufficiently long
| and complex, you've actually mitigated the threats involved with
| password reuse, memory, and complexity. But you've also made it
| impossible to steal from a cryptography backdoor, and the
| barrier-to-compromise involves your physical space being
| violated. But again, if you ask a cryptographer, or even most
| security professionals, this is a bad idea, because you're still
| risking physical compromise if...you work in an office, have
| kids, don't guard your home, etc.
|
| A lot of people dislike 1Password's decision to store passwords
| in cloud storage. This is a real risk, because a cryptosystem
| backdoor _would_ create danger. If you use a password storage app
| with strong cryptography, and store the passwords in a completely
| benign location (e.g., a network share, some random cloud storage
| provider), you can decouple the cryptography from the storage,
| which brings some safety.
|
| Now, back briefly to your question: why would people trust a
| completely SaaS password storage provider? Well, for me, it's
| that I know that Google Project Zero exists, and they do a lot of
| research into third party apps. I sleep easier at night knowing
| that lots of smart people are invested in trying to break
| 1Password's cryptography, and have thus-far been unsuccessful.
| Sure, a government might have a secret backdoor that I don't know
| about. But in my threat model, the government could just come
| arrest me for violating a non-disclosure agreement I've signed,
| and hit me with a wrench.
|
| In summary: for the vast majority of people, the threats that
| come from "memorizing passwords" are mitigated by password
| managers. Heck, you even say you have your "own methods for safe
| handling of passwords". I would argue that you have a password
| manager, it's just more DIY than something off-the-shelf, and
| that's fine!
| peakaboo wrote:
| You can host Bitwarden yourself if you want to and trust no one.
| ajs256 wrote:
| If you're going to selfhost, use Vaultwarden
| https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden - way lighter
| version that implements most of the features
| fsflover wrote:
| I don't trust them and use an offline virtual machine on Qubes OS
| to store my passwords instead.
| oneplane wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by password managers and trust.
|
| If you have an application that you trust (be it track record,
| inspection or known-good controls), and that application happens
| to also be a password manager, then the trust in the manager
| itself should be fine. If, however, you use a third party
| service, i.e. something managed by a company that holds your
| data, that is a different topic because you're talking about
| trusting a company.
|
| A password manager can be KeePass on your local FDE storage
| medium. A password manager can also be a web app hosted
| elsewhere. It can also be both. You can even mix it up and have
| the storage medium be remote storage in stead of local storage.
|
| If you currently have a file called "passwords.txt" stored in a
| public S3 bucket, that would be your 'own method' but would that
| really be good? Or perhaps you have an RSA-wrapped AES-encrypted
| spreadsheet you store locally with no back-ups, also possible.
| Too many unknown parameters.
|
| At the end of the day the solution that gets you strong unique
| passwords per entity in a way that you don't lose access to
| personally but also don't give unwanted access to towards third
| parties is better than not having a solution at all. (this
| includes physical paper password books, those are 'unhackable'
| after all)
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I just checked my Keepass database and it has 192 entries. 192
| unique, actually secure passwords. Without a password manager it
| would be a necessity to reuse passwords or have otherwise
| insecure passwords in some form.
|
| That's why I use a password manager. The small annoyance it is to
| keep the db file synced is well worth it.
| simonw wrote:
| This inspired me to count mine - my 1Password has 1,492 records
| now!
| mdellavo wrote:
| https://www.passwordstore.org/
| nickjj wrote:
| This is the only one I use. I've used it for like 5 years and
| have hundreds of passwords stored. Everything is offline and
| encrypted with GPG along with being command line driven. It's
| the ultimate tool for someone who primarily uses a workstation
| or laptop.
| mdellavo wrote:
| browserpass is the killer addon for pass - just calling it
| out
| colbyhub wrote:
| I have a few devices so I store the passwords as a git repo
| and periodically push/pull between them -- super seamless.
| ramses0 wrote:
| ...and there's a few handy-dandy phone apps which also
| support the git syncing.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| I don't trust them. I store passwords locally on my machine
| (encrypted).
| ahmaman wrote:
| I use 1password for the convenience they offer.
|
| However for important accounts, I use 2FA with yubikeys or codes
| that are not stored on 1password. Just in case.
|
| Especially for non-tech family members and friends. Its either an
| easy password manager or using the same password everywhere.
| tristor wrote:
| I'm surprised by so many of the comments here out-of-hand
| dismissing or denigrating any password manager that stores data
| in the cloud. There are ways to store data securely, one of the
| simplest methods is to do zero-knowledge encryption of that data
| by way of key-generation from a password only the user knows at
| the time of decryption. This is essentially how the vault
| functionality of most password managers work, whether that vault
| is stored locally or not. They used something like PBKDF2 to
| generate the key used for encryption from your password.
|
| There's no such thing as perfect security, but as a security-
| minded person I see nothing there to concern me simply because
| the data is stored in a company's S3 environment vs on Dropbox vs
| on my local disk. Presuming that the software itself has not been
| maliciously modified to leak the key, then regardless of where
| the data is stored it either requires breaking the encryption or
| finding the password that generated the key in order to access
| the data. My local disk is no more secure in that aspect, except
| that I may have the illusion of control. Availability is also an
| aspect of data security (in the CIA triangle) and a cloud
| provider that properly replicates and manages backups of data is
| more reliable than my local disk in this aspect and a fair trade-
| off for data I likely want to synchronize across systems and
| devices (phone and laptop, at minimum).
|
| Why should you trust a password manager?
|
| For me, it's pretty simple. I don't use social login, and I use
| unique usernames (most of the time) and passwords (every time)
| for hundreds of sites I've created accounts on over the years.
| This is because breaches /will/ happen, and password re-use is
| probably the single largest issue for user security, including
| for "power users" like myself. A password manager of /some kind/
| is basically required to have unique passwords across hundreds to
| thousands of sites. Certainly, there's more to it, and you need
| to figure out your own threat model and trust constraints, and I
| can't solve that for you. But as far as I am concerned, if I have
| a reasonable assurance that the right algorithms are used and
| those algorithms are correctly implemented by the password
| manager software, I see no reason to distrust it.
| manicdee wrote:
| The safety of ciphertext stored in the cloud is entirely
| dependent on the lack of state level actors interfering in
| encryption research, cipher engine design, chip manufacture,
| operation of cloud hardware, and day to day safety of cloud
| operator employees.
|
| The USA has been shown to be quite willing to violate all those
| conditions: NSA directly influencing cipher design, interfering
| with chip manufacture, seizing hardware wholesale, and engaging
| in "enhanced interrogations" in attempts to extract
| information.
|
| The threat level of this state action is 100% because they
| aren't going o spend all that time and money on these tools and
| not use them. They aren't focussed on cracking _your_ password,
| they just crack everyone's because that is easier to automate
| (see prior discussion regarding weakening encryption to suit
| the tools the TLAs already have access to).
|
| At least with my secrets stored on my hardware I have the
| assurance that the TLAs will need to be targeting me directly
| in order to obtain my secrets (much less likely than getting
| caught up in a dragnet).
| lixtra wrote:
| > There are ways to store data securely, one of the simplest
| methods is to do zero-knowledge encryption of that data by way
| of key-generation from a password only the user knows at the
| time of decryption.
|
| This keeps your passwords save until you enter your master
| password. At that point you have to trust the software that was
| downloaded a few days ago from an appstore or a few seconds ago
| from the company webserver. It might have been backdoored and
| happily phone home your master password.
|
| Your downloaded password manager might be a few years old and
| YOU decide when to upgrade.
| tristor wrote:
| Your argument has nothing to do with cloud storage or
| password managers generally and seems to be an argument
| against automatic updates. So, fine, disable automatic
| updates (although I'd argue you're safer with them).
|
| I also baked in the presumption that the software isn't
| malicious in my comment and called it out. So, sure, yes
| malware that leaks your password can exist. That doesn't
| really have any effect on whether password managers are a
| good thing or trustworthy.
| vkou wrote:
| If the client for a cloud password manager is open-source,
| I'm inclined to trust it about as much as I would a non-
| cloud open-source password manager.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I use 1password7 in a mode where I have to manually sync my
| vault. I've used other tools to prevent 1password from
| initiating any network connectivity at all.
| thom wrote:
| Ultimately I just wouldn't use a password manager if it wasn't
| synced with the cloud and didn't offer simple browser
| integration. Sure, that increases the attack surface. But the
| alternative is not that I put loads more effort into faffy open
| source workflows, it's that I go back to using crap passwords.
| autoexec wrote:
| I use an offline only open source password manager so I don't
| have to trust it. That and backing up the database solves the
| issue entirely
| theptip wrote:
| Bruce Schneier has written extensively on the subject (and has
| written a password manager so he knows what he's talking about):
|
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/02/on_the_securi...
|
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/06/risks_of_pass...
| mcint wrote:
| He's a great security expert.
|
| nit - I wouldn't claim that someone who _has_ written security
| (password, or cryptography)-related software, is necessarily
| _qualified_ to, or a trustworthy _expert_ in the field. In
| security especially, self-proclaimed expertise (as the
| strongest sales pitch) does not distinguish between respected
| experts and snake oil salesman.
|
| I would say that he's written several widely read and respected
| cryptography books, designed widely used algorithms (standards
| & well-tested candidates), and write about social & technical
| factors that surround & affect security.
|
| Good links! Thank you!
| milesvp wrote:
| I will tell you a good reason to trust password managers. I know
| a lawyer who does estate planning. When you start talking about
| "what happens when I die", passwords are a class of problem that
| has only gotten worse in the last 2 decades. There are legal ways
| for estate executors to request passwords, but it is a pain, and
| can be time consuming. She tends to recommend password managers
| because they tend to be more consistent than written down
| passwords in a safe. Further, having a password manager, where
| someone can be designated as a trustee makes executing a will
| considerably easier.
|
| Now, none of the above necessarily makes password managers safe.
| The increasing legal scrutiny that password manager providers
| face, means that they will tend to be relatively safe, but
| they're still a single point of failure. At some point you need
| to decide what trust level you want though, security is a lot
| about tradeoffs, and ease of access is always at odds with
| keeping things safe.
| zie wrote:
| I'm pretty sure even after death, it's still technically
| breaking the law to use someone else's password. So I'm
| surpised a lawyer would be so open about it, though I agree it
| definitely makes life 90% easier when it comes up :)
| ummonk wrote:
| At the bare minimum, you should trust the password manager that
| comes with your web browser. After all, you trust your browser
| enough to type your passwords into it.
|
| I personally just use the Safari browser together with Apple's
| Keychain.
| Vixel wrote:
| I trust password managers more than I trust my ability to write
| down every password I might need again, and somehow not lose that
| notebook or leave it somewhere for someone to read it.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| I use a password manager for the hundreds of accounts I have
| where security is not super important. Mostly as way to not have
| to reuse passwords (credential stuffing now makes up a
| significant amount of attack traffic), nor fight the varying
| password requirements ("shoot, did this website require a special
| character?"). Tbh, it's nice to have one less thing to worry
| about. For the increasing number of sites which require 2fa, it
| also let's me keep a totp token accessible from all my devices.
|
| My most secure accounts use their own individual, memorable,
| secure password.
|
| I do fear that even if my self-hosted password manager is secure
| today, there's nothing stopping a malicious update to that
| software which could exfiltrate all of my passwords.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Came here to say this. When you're on the job hunt, there are a
| thousand different MyWorkDays you'll need to sign into and what
| an incredible pain it is to keep track of those manually. Just
| don't forget to delete all those accounts when you're done
| hunting.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| This is my approach as well. I see passwords as being in tiers:
|
| - Level 0: the serious stuff that would absolutely suck if it
| got compromised. Namely Google. Banks.
|
| - Level 1: things that would be an inconvenience if they were
| compromised. Okay it's annoying that someone got into my Amazon
| account or something, but this can be dealt with.
|
| - Level 2: passwords my in-laws are going to use to watch
| Netflix or the like. If this gets compromised... ok, that's a
| pain for Netflix but this is essentially a victimless
| situation.
|
| Password managers are really good for the Level 2 stuff.
| Really, there are too many passwords we need to know. They are
| okay for the Level 1 stuff, just have an idea who you're going
| to call. I wouldn't use them for the Level 0 stuff.
|
| Like anything else, you balance your risk against convenience.
| Approached this way, even if the password manager gets hacked,
| you're only minorly inconvenienced. Always have 2FA on where
| allowed and what's the worst that will happen?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Password managers are by far the safest way to store the
| level 0 stuff too, fwiw.
| PennRobotics wrote:
| I leave the really unimportant crap in the Firefox "generate
| and remember this login", the regular passwords in Bitwarden,
| and financial passwords in my head.
|
| Answering the original question: I trust that Bitwarden's
| Github source is what drives their service and that their
| popularity ensures the source is audited on a regular basis by
| reasonably skilled software folks. It's the same degree of
| trust I give to the people that build every reasonably
| vulnerable product I use: elevators, phones, cars, door/window
| locks, etc.
|
| -----
|
| For me (and perhaps only me) a more pressing concern is that
| fingerprint scanning is common in apps that are meant to
| protect data: banking apps, stock market apps, Bitwarden.
|
| NOBODY makes a significant effort to hide fingertips. Cameras
| are cheaper, more accurate, and more numerous than ever. People
| don't clean every surface they touch. It can't be so difficult
| to 3d print a mold and find the right material to make a false
| finger.
|
| Android's security model has a nice built-in feature: If you
| have someone's phone for a few seconds and know their unlock
| code (not too tough to espy... right, Ye?) you can keep
| retrying the false finger for that person until it works. Only
| then do you switch to the important app.
|
| Oh, and... Fingerprints, unlike master passwords, are nearly
| impossible to change.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Like most of the posters here, I trust my local password manager
| (keepass) for the most part (well, if my personal machine is
| compromised to the point where I don't trust programs running on
| it, I guess I'm truly boned).
|
| I have recently started putting some low-value (social media)
| passwords in the firefox password store, just for autofill
| convenience. Does anyone know if there are some massive landmines
| to this sort of thing?
| aborsy wrote:
| Pass is a small bash script
|
| https://www.passwordstore.org/
|
| You can read it and make sure you are comfortable with it.
| makeworld wrote:
| I trust hosted Bitwarden because it is open source and uses zero-
| access/end-to-end encryption.
| u2077 wrote:
| Keepassxc and strongbox (iOS). Both are open-source, I manually
| sync with iCloud + local backups on each device.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| I trust the one I wrote for myself. I would have a hard time
| trusting a 3rd party tool without a lot of insight and feedback
| as to its design and implementation, and credible assessments of
| its trustworthiness.
| tex0 wrote:
| Same here. But then I wouldn't recommend anyone to do the same
| hi5eyes wrote:
| icloud/keychain and KeePass, im surprised people trust other pwd
| managers
| _dain_ wrote:
| I use KeepassXC. It's free and open source, and local-only: my
| password file never touches the cloud even in encrypted form. It
| has hundreds of account credentials in it, along with other notes
| like security questions and which email I used for signup. The
| random password generation feature is a godsend: we all hate
| those security policies that ask for "at least one lowercase, at
| least one uppercase, at least one number, at least one special
| character, between 8 and 20 characters long" or some such
| outdated nonsense. I can tell it to generate a random password
| meeting those requirements, saving me the hassle of doing it
| myself. Or I can ask it for a 6 word long diceware phrase, for
| sites enlightened enough to support that. It makes my online life
| massively more convenient and secure.
| philonoist wrote:
| This is why people design password managers with "Zero Trust
| Architecture" and it is open source and auditable. Now what have
| you to lose?
|
| The comment section is full of false dichotomy of no PM vs
| vulnerable ones like SaaS based ones.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| There are offline capable ones that basically protect your
| passwords via an encrypted file you know the password for, I've
| seen this for Android and Desktop, not sure about iOS but I would
| be surprised if there wasn't. There's open source ones like
| BitWarden as well which I use. You can quite literally fully
| manage your password manager yourself. Then you have Firefox's
| rolled out instance, where if you forget your password, the
| moment you reset it, you lose all the saved passwords. They can't
| recover it because it is encrypted with your password.
| aborsy wrote:
| The question also applies to other software.
|
| Do you trust your backup software placing your encrypted data at
| the feet of NSA (cloud storage)?
| alexk307 wrote:
| I don't. You can easily set up your own.
|
| https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
| jiveturkey wrote:
| autofill is the most important bit.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| You don't need to trust all of them. You might have been wrong to
| trust lastpass a few years ago as they got hacked, however
| something fully open source like bitwarden builds trust through
| sheer code. It is truly end-end transparency. You're welcome to
| look at it if you'd like.
|
| I count on their cloud to host my data but might as well switch
| to the hosted version. If you have multiple devices with the app
| installed you should be able to have at least one device that
| still holds all your data should bitwarden ever go down.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| > passwords on the web
|
| password safe isnt on the web.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| The reason password managers help your opsec is not because they
| can store passwords..but because they can randomize passwords,
| too, and per website.
|
| If one of those web services is compromised, the other accounts
| and credentials stay unaffected.
|
| And humans on the other hand have maybe 2 or 3 passwords based on
| some imaginitive sense of "how secure and trustworthy" the
| website is...only to realize later that their paypal password
| ain't that secure, and that now all other "secured" accounts are
| compromised, too.
|
| I mean, BreachCompilation and Collection No1-6 have shown us not
| only the passwords to accounts, but the patterns specific people
| use once their passwords have been compromised and what they add
| to their patterns when they are forced to change their passwords
| after a breach.
|
| And let's just leave it with humans are not good at remembering
| special characters, and they do like counting a lot.
| paulpauper wrote:
| They are fine as long as you don't have anything crypto-related
| tied to them
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| If you don't trust password managers you're trusting something
| else. You have to take that into consideration and weight in
| versus your threat model.
|
| And you probably don't even need to trust a password manager with
| every password you have, you can keep just the random 200+ logins
| you probably have for weird websites. And keep banking, emailing
| and the other important stuff away from it. Also, you don't even
| need to have your password manager store the actual passwords
| there, you could "pepper" what is stored so you transform it
| after you paste it to the website.
| b3morales wrote:
| One word about peppering, keep the inevitable future in mind
| and strongly consider ensuring your transform is available to
| whoever will be managing your affairs after you shuffle off.
| Keeping it with a lawyer or in a safe deposit box, perhaps.
|
| Source: helped deal with an uncle's many, many digital
| resources after he passed unexpectedly.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Because I too had "my own methods for safe handling of passwords
| on the web", but eventually realized that's a fallacy. Unless
| you're some memory palace super champion, you're probably using
| an underlying pattern to remember all your various passwords,
| perhaps without even realizing it. I didn't realize it until I
| started using separate passwords for everything, and "everything"
| started multiplying exponentially year over year. Only then did
| the pattern emerge to me, and only then did I realize it would
| emerge to a computer algorithm in about 1 femtosecond flat.
|
| There is no more convenient "safe handling of passwords on the
| web" than a password manager, in my experience. That said, if you
| know of a better, but at least as safe, way, then please share.
|
| Insert shameless Bitwarden plug here.
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