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Ask HN: Password manager recommendation?

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Re: Ask HN: Password manager recommendation?

#41

Post by ravloony »

dallbee wrote: post #12

I'm a huge fan of Pass. ( https://www.passwordstore.org/ ). It's command line based but there are adaptations for various platforms. It works best in a UNIX-like environment, though.

I also use Pass. It integrates great with git, so you can store your password database anywhere, and sync on demand with `pass git pull`.

Also by using GPG as an encryption mechanism it allows you to use your gpg-agent so you only have to authenticate when you log in to your computer.

Basically it relies on existing tools to solve existing problems (sync, encryption) and concentrates on the added value: listing, storage and retrieval of passwords.

A greatly useful application of the unix philosophy.

Re: Ask HN: Password manager recommendation?

#44

Post by SyneRyder »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #37

Is there one that does NOT use any off-device storage? Or one that provides options for how and where your data is stored? What I mean by this is no cloud, no central server storage, no third party storage of your data at all. In other words, if you have it installed on three devices there's file of some sort that you have to replicate between them yourself or some network-based (not internet, local network) approach…

SplashID has that option. They promote a cloud-sync option, but you can opt for WiFi-Sync-Only instead, which will synchronize your phone to your desktop/laptop and never interact with the Cloud. There's also an option to never sync with any other device. I've been using it since the PalmOS days and have it working today across my Mac, Windows, iOS & Android devices.

https://www.splashid.com/

Re: Ask HN: Password manager recommendation?

#45

Post by onetom »

1. 1Password IF your desktop machines are all macOS/iOS/Android.

Pros:

* Best UX

* Great keyboard support

* Non-cloud, local network sync option

* Sharing for families and teams via vaults which specify permissions of users (identified by their team specific email address)

* Login into multiple teams

* Intuitive web login form autocompletion and password generation for account creation

Cons:

* Closed source, so you still have to trust their binaries and their team

* No Linux version and only the Windows version is still beta, so the the whole team/family should be on Macs pretty much

2. Dashlane

Pros:

* Slightly cheaper than 1Password

* Reasonably nice UI

* Windows client

Cons:

* Annoying UX (auto-generated passwords are hard to find later, doesn't recognize a lot of login forms, etc etc)

* Almost no keyboard shortcuts

* Sharing is per-password with user emails (which might be the private emails, because they don't have proper team support)

* Closed source

3. Lastpass

Pros:

* Even cheaper than Dashlane and 1Password

* Enterprise plan has nice company-wide audit of password usage and hygiene

* Share passwords without revealing them (which is useless if you can hack their clients of course)

* Sharing is folder based

* Lastpass 4.0 got a modern look and feel finally, but it's still ugly compared to the others

Cons:

* Enterprise admin interface UI & UX is terrible

* Can't fill out a lot of login forms (even basic ones, like google, amazon IAM), especially if you have multiple accounts for them

* Closed source

4. KeePass - haven't used it for real, but I know about one, 30+ ppl company successfully using it on all 3 major platforms

Pros:

* Open source

* Cross platform

Cons:

* Haven't found a proper web login form filler integration for it

* Quite inconvenient compared to eg. 1Password

Not sure how sharing is supposed to work in it exactly. I think it's out of their scope.

Re: Ask HN: Password manager recommendation?

#46

Post by onetom »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #37

Is there one that does NOT use any off-device storage? Or one that provides options for how and where your data is stored? What I mean by this is no cloud, no central server storage, no third party storage of your data at all. In other words, if you have it installed on three devices there's file of some sort that you have to replicate between them yourself or some network-based (not internet, local network) approach…

1Password has that option too. In fact if you happy with that option, you don't even have to pay them anything.

https://support.1password.com/sync-options/#sync-over-a-loca...

Btw, the closed source client is also a weak point in the whole architecture, but if you don't worry about that, then probably you shouldn't worry about letting them store your encrypted passwords.

Re: Ask HN: Password manager recommendation?

#47

Post by WorldMaker »

z1mm32m4n wrote: post #17

I use KeePass (MacPass on OS X). It's open source and saves to a single encrypted file. I stick it in Dropbox and it's available everywhere I need.

I use a small constellation of context-specific KeePass files (Work versus Home, for example) as the overall huge number of password groups ("folders") started to get hard to manage, and I also wanted to start better managing the specific devices with access to some of the files.

I had been using various combos of Dropbox/OneDrive to sync several of my primary files, but recently moved to Resilio Sync (formerly known as Bittorrent Sync) Encrypted Share folders because I can have "dumb nodes" that can share the "torrent" of the encrypted share folder but not access the internals (individual files), such as an always available VPS in the cloud somewhere.

Re: Ask HN: Password manager recommendation?

#48

Post by WorldMaker »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #37

Is there one that does NOT use any off-device storage? Or one that provides options for how and where your data is stored? What I mean by this is no cloud, no central server storage, no third party storage of your data at all. In other words, if you have it installed on three devices there's file of some sort that you have to replicate between them yourself or some network-based (not internet, local network) approach…

KeePass (and family) store to encrypted files on your machine that never leave the device by default. It doesn't know or care about cloud or central server storage. (It simply provides a means to reconcile changes made in other files, such as synchronized conflict versions.)

Most people then choose the cloud storage of their own choice (Dropbox, OneDrive, Resilio Sync, etc...) to pass the files between devices as interested/necessary. KeePass doesn't know nor care that a sync provider is being used and its just like any other file to sync (which is why you can choose any file sync strategy under the sun).

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