[HN Gopher] Passwordless Authentication - Access Your Bitwarden ...
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       Passwordless Authentication - Access Your Bitwarden Web Vault
       Without a Password
        
       Author : jacooper
       Score  : 63 points
       Date   : 2022-12-05 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bitwarden.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bitwarden.com)
        
       | yasp wrote:
       | How does Bitwarden protect against a malicious mobile app update?
        
       | oddeyed wrote:
       | I had no idea this was a new feature but used this today. It was
       | extremely convenient!
        
       | ghostly_s wrote:
       | Waaay at the bottom:                   Note: Logging in with a
       | device is currently only available on the Bitwarden cloud server
       | (https://vault.bitwarden.com).
       | 
       | And even there, I followed all the directions and don't have the
       | 'Log in with device' button. Waste of time.
        
       | imwillofficial wrote:
       | Bitwarden is such an amazing value. $10 a year, constant
       | progress, secure, quality product
        
       | teruakohatu wrote:
       | Is 2FA still hidden behind the paywall? While bitwarden does this
       | they are doing a major disservice to the averge (unpaid) user.
       | 
       | Edit: thanks, sounds like 2fa is now free.
        
         | castrodd wrote:
         | Isn't it like $10 per year for a premium account?
        
           | Alupis wrote:
           | Yes, and worth every penny in my experience. It's really a
           | great app, and a great service.
           | 
           | Happily paid my $10 after using it around the office for a
           | few months (paid Teams account).
           | 
           | We came from KeePass, so the whole cloud thing was new. But
           | it's "just worked" remarkably well.
           | 
           | The multiple-profiles feature was a game changer, allowing me
           | to access both my work credentials and personal credentials
           | from the same app, while keeping them entirely separate is
           | really nice.
        
         | y0ssr3n wrote:
         | The free plan supports the following types of 2FA: "Email,
         | Authentication App"
         | 
         | Upgrading to the Premium Account ($10/yr) gets you additional
         | options: "YubiKey, FIDO2, Duo, Email, Authentication app"
         | 
         | Source: https://bitwarden.com/pricing/
        
         | llampx wrote:
         | I use 2FA with a free account.
        
       | OJFord wrote:
       | Unfortunately no plans to offer it for third-party stored
       | credentials though - this is just for 'unlocking' Bitwarden
       | itself.
       | 
       | 'Passwordless' badly needs 'password manager' support, or other
       | cross-platform implementation, IMO.
        
       | sakisv wrote:
       | That's very nice, well done!
       | 
       | For a moment there I had hoped that maybe it would solve the
       | problem in the opposite direction: I'm typing the master password
       | so mechanically when I'm on my laptop, that I really struggle to
       | remember it when I have to type it on a screen - to the point
       | that I must go sit at a computer open a notepad, let muscle
       | memory take over and then look at the screen to see what I typed
       | /facepalm
       | 
       | Anyway, in all seriousness, while this is a scenario that happens
       | very rarely, it still makes me wonder if it would be possible to
       | do the pasdwordless login the other way, i.e. authenticate the
       | phone using a trusted laptop (maybe a fingerprint enabled one)?
        
         | Fervicus wrote:
         | Ha! I can definitely relate. Takes me 3-4 tries to get the
         | password correct on mobile, and not so rarely I have to type it
         | on the computer first.
        
       | sschueller wrote:
       | I just looked at the requirements to host your own Bitwarden
       | server. Why does a password manager need 2GB of ram (4GB
       | recommended) and 25GB[1] of storage? That seems quite excessive,
       | how much data and traffic does this thing need to handle for me
       | plus family members?
       | 
       | [1] https://bitwarden.com/help/install-on-premise-linux/
        
         | Someone1234 wrote:
         | Because it uses Docker and that is what Docker requires.
        
           | turmeric_root wrote:
           | Vaultwarden's Docker images are much smaller:
           | https://hub.docker.com/r/vaultwarden/server
        
           | x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
           | No, it's because it uses _several_ docker containers and runs
           | mssql.
        
             | Someone1234 wrote:
             | "No" then go on to reinforce my explanation.
             | 
             | Those minimums are taken from Docker. The person above
             | asked why they were what they were, I answered. You're just
             | further reinforcing what I explained.
        
               | cweagans wrote:
               | Running something in a Docker container adds very very
               | little overhead - to the point that it's almost
               | immeasurable. The resource utilization is specifically
               | because of the services that have been packaged in the
               | containers.
               | 
               | If you were running the Bitwarden server on bare metal
               | (which you can definitely do), the requirements would
               | still be the same.
        
         | alyandon wrote:
         | Check out Vaultwarden instead - https://github.com/dani-
         | garcia/vaultwarden.
         | 
         | It is written in Rust and is much lighter on resource
         | requirements.                 CONTAINER ID   NAME        CPU %
         | MEM USAGE / LIMIT     MEM %     NET I/O           BLOCK I/O
         | PIDS       ecce485b8b3a   bitwarden   0.06%     46.58MiB /
         | 1.937GiB   2.35%     1.63MB / 28.1MB   17.5MB / 81.9kB   11
        
           | thewataccount wrote:
           | I've been considering vaultwarden, question though.
           | 
           | I assume bitwarden's implementation has been more thoroughly
           | reviewed.
           | 
           | Assuming there is a critical bug in vaultwarden, what is the
           | severity/what information is exposed? Is it relatively safe
           | even then because of the E2E?
        
             | xoa wrote:
             | As well as what sibling said about it being E2EE and just
             | using a standard API for storage, there are awesome tools
             | these days so you can (and I think should) lock down your
             | instance fairly well. Now when I run services like that I
             | access them exclusively via WireGuard or Nebula, no
             | exposure to the public internet at all. It's reliable,
             | dependable and performant enough to pretty much put
             | everything inside of by default. And for something as
             | lightweight as this it should be fine running it at home
             | off of most connections, if you don't have a fixed IP can
             | bounce through even the cheapest VPS instance and still
             | store nothing in the cloud (or run something like Nebula
             | and automate that bit so that it's an encrypted mesh and
             | only a minimal Lighthouse node need be 3rd party). If your
             | instance is just for yourself then even the server can
             | still be another of your devices. Selfhosting absolutely
             | has its challenges and costs but the surface area for
             | exploiting bugs drops a lot when there is no 3rd party or
             | shared environment involved.
        
               | thewataccount wrote:
               | Thanks for the explination!
               | 
               | > if you don't have a fixed IP can bounce through even
               | the cheapest VPS instance and still store nothing in the
               | cloud
               | 
               | I've been meaning to look into this with wireguard, but
               | I'm having trouble searching for/finding how to do this.
               | Is "bastion host" what I'd want? Also is there a way to
               | ensure the VPS cannot access the network as well, and
               | just tunnels it essentially?
        
               | xoa wrote:
               | > _I 've been meaning to look into this with wireguard,
               | but I'm having trouble searching for/finding how to do
               | this. Is "bastion host" what I'd want? Also is there a
               | way to ensure the VPS cannot access the network as well,
               | and just tunnels it essentially?_
               | 
               | First, yes a search phrase like that should get you the
               | right terms, though there isn't anything inherently
               | special about it. If multiple systems are connected to
               | one system with wireguard giving them all access to a
               | given subnet is straight forward. As far as the VPS, it
               | can indeed access that subnet too, since it's acting as
               | part of the subnet, but you can use normal firewall rules
               | on the far side internally to control what can talk to
               | what and how. And in this kind of specific instance the
               | WG is more about controller public facing surface area,
               | the Bitwarden/Vaultwarden traffic in flight is itself
               | encrypted.
               | 
               | Second though, having said all that I think if you
               | worried about the VPS bit (or even if not) you should
               | take a look at the Nebula SDN [0, 1] instead. It's built
               | on the Noise encryption framework as well. There, the
               | fixed IP node (the "Lighthouse") primarily acts to let
               | other nodes know their mutual addresses, and they then
               | attempt to form a direct link with no bouncing through a
               | bastion, it's a real mesh. This generally works even if
               | both are NAT'd, and if not it's transparent fallback and
               | still encrypted between them. Depending on distance
               | between nodes this can be a lot lower latency as well.
               | With Nebula you establish an internal CA (super easy
               | built-in tool for it) and that doesn't (and absolutely
               | shouldn't) live on the lighthouse.
               | 
               | I'm fortunate enough to have fixed IPs available to me at
               | home and office and have tended to use WG a lot just
               | because it's had more advanced support and performance in
               | constrained environments for me (kernel support in Linux
               | and now BSDs). Nebula has been super slick though and
               | I've been using it more and more. It makes all this
               | really easy.
               | 
               | Anyway, hope this helps a bit. It's really exciting to me
               | how much open source networking power is now available to
               | everyone. It's a bit of a counter decentralization force
               | IMO to the last few decades push towards central service
               | providers.
               | 
               | ----
               | 
               | 0: https://github.com/slackhq/nebula
               | 
               | 1: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/12/how-to-set-up-
               | your-o... _(note 3 years old, there are now Android /iOS
               | clients as well and things are further refined)_
        
             | OJFord wrote:
             | Aiui, the server's really just a storage backend
             | implementing the correct API - vaultwarden can't really do
             | any harm, it just stores what the client (encrypts and)
             | tells it to. Worst case it doesn't store, and you still
             | (but only) have a copy on the client.
        
               | gpm wrote:
               | Eh, worst case you access it via the web-ui, it has been
               | taken over, and it serves a malicious copy of the front-
               | end that steals your password.
               | 
               | But... that seems reasonably unlikely.
        
         | suumcuique wrote:
         | It includes a MS SQL server among other things, so for serving
         | single digit users its gonna be heavy. Check out Vaultwarden as
         | an alternative for small scale self-hosting.
        
         | heresjohnny wrote:
         | Honest question: do you believe that you'll be able to
         | guarantee the same/better uptime, performance, and security
         | compared to the SaaS version? Hosting your own password manager
         | seems like something you really shouldn't do, just like hosting
         | your own e-mail. This stuff is critical to your life.
        
           | sam_goody wrote:
           | Sure.
           | 
           | Hosting your own is a twenty minute setup, more or less, and
           | $5/mo on Hetzner. Uptime, in my experience, is 5 nines.
           | 
           | With SaaS, I am losing the main reason that I am using
           | Bitwarden - that I don't want the X agency to force Bitwarden
           | to give them my passwords.
           | 
           | And I know that if said agency (it varies by country and
           | target) could definitely hack the VPS if I was important
           | enough, that is not part of my threat profile. Self hosted is
           | far less likely to get auto vacuumed than SaaS data.
        
             | idiotsecant wrote:
             | I think if X agency wants your information the $5 wrench
             | attack will probably bypass your self-hosted server
             | infrastructure.
        
           | iso1631 wrote:
           | Yup, it's not rocket science if you already run your own
           | services. An entire generation of techies seem to be
           | completely scared of running their own machine and think it's
           | some kind of massively difficult task.
        
           | zikduruqe wrote:
           | Just use passwordstore.org and stand up a bare git repo. It
           | really doesn't need to be terribly complicated.
        
           | koevet wrote:
           | I have been running Vaultwarden (formerly known as
           | bitwarden_rs) for years in a docker container and I don't
           | remember a single time that it went down.
        
           | Yujf wrote:
           | Better security for sure. Bitwarden is a massive target while
           | I am not. The chance that bitwarden has a databreach is way
           | bigger than the chance that my server gets hacked. No one
           | cares about my server, I am nobody not worth attacking. As
           | long as I don't leave any big holes that can be found by an
           | untargeted attack (which I won't, I run everything behind a
           | personal VPN) it is safer.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-05 23:01 UTC)