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Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?

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Re: Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?

#111
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (ak…

> 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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?

#112
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one uppercase, at least one number, at least one special character, between 8 and 20 characters long" or some such outdated nonsense.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.

Re: Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?

#114
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.

Re: Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?

#115
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/

Re: Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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

Re: Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?

#118
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.

Re: Ask HN: Why should I trust password managers?

#120
post #34

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 integra…

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.

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