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Horcrux: A Password Manager for Paranoids

arxiv.org

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Re: Horcrux: A Password Manager for Paranoids

#161

Post by baby »

kodablah wrote: post #71
curiousGambler wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why is an AJAX post of JSON with credentials embedded bad practice?

Not bad practice from a security perspective per se, just annoying to users that don't want JS, or like the non-password fields to support their browser's features like autocomplete, etc. Granted if it's a SPA, some of that usability shop has sailed. And while any AJAX post is secure normally, many JS implemented login solutions open themselves up to CSRF and other problems.

You can have the form submit to a real address when js is disabled, and disable the form's behavior when js is enabled.

Re: Horcrux: A Password Manager for Paranoids

#162

Post by forgotpwtomain »

dsacco wrote: post #160
zgotsch wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good way to find people who are qualified to do such a review? This paper was written by a Ph.D. student and professor of Computer Science at a respected university. The professor teaches a crypto course on Udacity ( https://www.udacity.com/course/applied-cryptography--cs387 ). If they don't meet the criteria for being cryptographers, I wonder how many people in the world do?

I'm going to push back on this a bit. Thomas responded alongside this comment to talk about how academic cryptographers are not necessarily qualified to implement original crypto, and I largely agree with that; however, I don't actually think that's the issue here. Rather I would pin this on a lack of peer review. I could be wrong, but I don't believe the author of this paper has had it published or at least accepted…

> A qualified peer review would (hopefully :) have caught this and other latent issues if an HN commenter did.

Would the qualified peer-review necessarily be reading the NodeJS code, or just checking the theoretical soundness of the paper? I'm not so certain about the former...

Re: Horcrux: A Password Manager for Paranoids

#163

Post by dspillett »

pishpash wrote: post #111

Speaking of, why is there still no standard protocol for changing passwords? That's 90% of the barrier to managing passwords.

Three is no complete general agreement on best practise, and probably never will be as the risk factors involved are not entirely objective.

Any attempts to create a standard will result in several competing standards ending in this ubiquitous problem: https://xkcd.com/927/

Re: Horcrux: A Password Manager for Paranoids

#164

Post by tptacek »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #162
dsacco wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to push back on this a bit. Thomas responded alongside this comment to talk about how academic cryptographers are not necessarily qualified to implement original crypto, and I largely agree with that; however, I don't actually think that's the issue here. Rather I would pin this on a lack of peer review. I could be wrong, but I don't believe the author of this paper has had it published or at least accepted…

> A qualified peer review would (hopefully :) have caught this and other latent issues if an HN commenter did. Would the qualified peer-review necessarily be reading the NodeJS code, or just checking the theoretical soundness of the paper? I'm not so certain about the former...

You absolutely need both skills.

Re: Horcrux: A Password Manager for Paranoids

#165

Post by pbsd »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #162
dsacco wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to push back on this a bit. Thomas responded alongside this comment to talk about how academic cryptographers are not necessarily qualified to implement original crypto, and I largely agree with that; however, I don't actually think that's the issue here. Rather I would pin this on a lack of peer review. I could be wrong, but I don't believe the author of this paper has had it published or at least accepted…

> A qualified peer review would (hopefully :) have caught this and other latent issues if an HN commenter did. Would the qualified peer-review necessarily be reading the NodeJS code, or just checking the theoretical soundness of the paper? I'm not so certain about the former...

Almost certainly not the former, no. At best the code would be "supplementary material", which reviewers are not required to go over.

Re: Horcrux: A Password Manager for Paranoids

#166

Post by vlucas »

iancarroll wrote: post #5

I am pretty sure the code is reusing IVs for AES-CTR[0] (i.e. the encryption is worthless), because it doesn't specify an IV and Node seems to derive the IV from the key.[1] This seems like a massive footgun in Node. I don't think their scheme results in different keys for each site, but I could be wrong. [0] https://github.com/HainaLi/horcrux_password_manager/blob/mas... [1] https://nodejs.org/api/crypto.html#crypto…

Alas, this is the very reason I wrote this blog post on stronger encryption in node.js:

http://vancelucas.com/blog/stronger-encryption-and-decryptio...

Re: Horcrux: A Password Manager for Paranoids

#168

Post by deno »

tIONTamINariciA wrote: post #104
deno wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being vulnerable to blunt objects does not mean you shouldn’t care about other attack vectors.

Overly focusing on one attack vector still leaves you vulnerable to many others. System designers need to consider risk:reward and effort:reward for users. The paper offers an interesting but extreme extension into one aspect of security that users control. That is great to offer an extreme solution for the paranoid. If implemented well, even the less paranoid could use it. Sadly this solution still offers less secur…

> Sadly this solution still offers less security than systems integrated into SSO/OAuth and 2FA.

OAuth implementations very often have vulnerabilities. Just look at how many Facebook had!

Not to mention 1) it doesn’t scale like passwords and 2) all the privacy implications.

As for 2FA it’s in addition to primary authentication scheme, like a password, not instead.

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