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Password managers less secure than promised

ethz.ch

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Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#41

Post by Someone1234 »

bstsb wrote: post #9

caveat not properly addressed in the blog post: all "attacks" are assuming full takeover of web servers, which is certainly a scenario that should be protected against, but isn't really a vulnerability unless chained with something else. almost all online services would be "vulnerable" in this way - take almost any login system. an RCE on a system hosting a login page would obviously be vulnerable to account takeover…

I use Bitwarden, and I like them, but I still disagree.

One of the things Bitwarden's design is MEANT to offer is "zero knowledge" meaning that it is an AES-256 encrypted database "blob", with PBKDF2 derived master password.

So "compromised" server absolutely IS something the DESIGN should protect against. If compromising Bitwarden's servers lets them extract what they say they can extract, then the whole "zero knowledge" assurance is dead in the water.

Plus, Bitwarden themselves don't even need to be compromised, we could have a DNS redirect into a server the bad-guys (inc. national-state) control. Then leverage that into complete compromise of your database.

Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#42

Post by dizhn »

wps wrote: post #24
LoganDark wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KeePassXC can even still be online, too; example: https://logandark.net/passwords.kdbx It's not centralized, of course; you still have to download the entire database, and then potentially upload the entire database again for any changes; but it doesn't have these vulnerabilities.

Haha this was a powermove. It is genuinely great that since it’s just a file you can host it anywhere you want. S3, WebDAV, your own site. I personally use copyparty and WireGuard for my kdbx file. I find it better than syncthing because there’s an obvious master copy (edited in place), and there’s no good way to keep syncthing running all the time on iOS, which can lead to sync conflicts.

I sometimes casually include tokens in my comments (changing a few characters here and there) to make people gasp but parent is taking it to a different level.

Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#43

Post by eblume »

spacebuffer wrote: post #21
baal80spam wrote: post #3

That's why KeePass is still the king. Offline vault > online vault.

What to do if my house catches on fire, including my computer where the passwords are stored?

I recently orchestrated this, although in my case I've chosen to use 1password's cloud based store as my primary secret store, so I'm accepting some exposure right off the bat that you might not be comfortable with.

I've documented the recovery process here: https://docs.eblu.me/how-to/operations/restore-1password-bac...

Basically, I have a borg backup job which runs every day, in a 3-2-1 replication strategy with the backups being sent both to a locally encrypted NAS (backups themselves have an additional layer of encryption via borg) as well as off-site with BorgBase. Those backups scoop up an export of 1password that I have a reminder to kick off manually about once a month via this script: https://github.com/eblume/blumeops/blob/main/mise-tasks/op-b...

The password that decrypts the key (along with the password that decrypts the backup) is stored on a piece of paper in a fireproof safe in my house. I've got a reminder to practice the entire DR process every six months, although I've only done it once so far as this is all pretty new.

It was fun to build!

Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#44

Post by fullstop »

Telaneo wrote: post #37
fullstop wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. I need to have those offsite, but they are not modified at the same frequency as passwords.

How often do your change your passwords? Assuming they are decently long and all that, why would you change them at all other than when a site gets breached? The only reason my Keepass database changes is because I make new accounts on sites every now and then, and that's a fairly rare thing these days. And if I get so ungodly unlucky that my house burns down before my off-site database is updated to have that new ac…

Every time I add an account, for one. And there's still plenty of (dumb) sites which force me to change my password and sometimes username periodically.

Keeping an offsite database in sync is tedious, especially if it's delivered via sneakernet.

Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#45

Post by fullstop »

Someone1234 wrote: post #41
bstsb wrote: post #9

caveat not properly addressed in the blog post: all "attacks" are assuming full takeover of web servers, which is certainly a scenario that should be protected against, but isn't really a vulnerability unless chained with something else. almost all online services would be "vulnerable" in this way - take almost any login system. an RCE on a system hosting a login page would obviously be vulnerable to account takeover…

I use Bitwarden, and I like them, but I still disagree. One of the things Bitwarden's design is MEANT to offer is "zero knowledge" meaning that it is an AES-256 encrypted database "blob", with PBKDF2 derived master password. So "compromised" server absolutely IS something the DESIGN should protect against. If compromising Bitwarden's servers lets them extract what they say they can extract, then the whole "zero knowl…

Does't TLS pinning alleviate the DNS attack?

Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#46

Post by Telaneo »

fullstop wrote: post #44
Telaneo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do your change your passwords? Assuming they are decently long and all that, why would you change them at all other than when a site gets breached? The only reason my Keepass database changes is because I make new accounts on sites every now and then, and that's a fairly rare thing these days. And if I get so ungodly unlucky that my house burns down before my off-site database is updated to have that new ac…

Every time I add an account, for one. And there's still plenty of (dumb) sites which force me to change my password and sometimes username periodically. Keeping an offsite database in sync is tedious, especially if it's delivered via sneakernet.

I add an account to that database maybe twice a year, probably less. Do you make a lot more accounts than that?

The off-site solution I have updates a lot more often than that, although that's only because only the really important stuff is backed up in that way; the stuff I truly need to survive my house burning down.

Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#47

Post by fullstop »

63 wrote: post #27

The article is nearly useless for users of the software who want to know how their data may have been affected. The researchers' website is more descriptive, especilly wrt specific findings. https://zkae.io/

Bitwarden's response [1] is interesting.

"All issues have been addressed by Bitwarden. Seven of which have been resolved or are in active remediation by the Bitwarden team. The remaining three issues have been accepted as intentional design decisions necessary for product functionality."

They don't expand on what those three are.

1. https://bitwarden.com/blog/security-through-transparency-eth...

Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#48

Post by herczegzsolt »

rorylawless wrote: post #8
mjamil wrote: post #2

Has there been a similar evaluation of 1Password?

1Password wrote a response to the paper: https://1password.com/blog/eth-zurich-zero-knowledge-malicio...

I am bit disappointed they did not immediately jump on implementing the two straightforward recommendations:

> PROPOSED MITIGATION. A straightforward mitigation is to have the client sign vault keys using the RSA private key in the keyset before encrypting them with the RSA public key.

> PROPOSED MITIGATION. [...] it would be easy for 1Password to prevent it entirely: the secret key can be used (with proper key derivation) to authenticate the KDF parameters with a cryptographic MAC.

To be fair, these issues are not really impacting long-time users. I have hundreds if not thousands of items in my vaults, there's no way i'm not noticing if they dissappear (which would be a side effect of these attacks).

Overall, I think 1password can be proud of their architecture and product quality, but i'd love to see these improvements - and maybe something like a "signal verification code" for sharing?

Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#49

Post by fullstop »

Telaneo wrote: post #46
fullstop wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I add an account, for one. And there's still plenty of (dumb) sites which force me to change my password and sometimes username periodically. Keeping an offsite database in sync is tedious, especially if it's delivered via sneakernet.

I add an account to that database maybe twice a year, probably less. Do you make a lot more accounts than that? The off-site solution I have updates a lot more often than that, although that's only because only the really important stuff is backed up in that way; the stuff I truly need to survive my house burning down.

I take it that you don't have children?

I'm almost done with that aspect of my life now, but every school year it feels like there's a new slate of apps, parent communication portals, etc. I need to manage these as well.

It's way more often than twice a year for me. And it's accelerating.

Re: Password managers less secure than promised

#50

Post by Telaneo »

fullstop wrote: post #49
Telaneo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I add an account to that database maybe twice a year, probably less. Do you make a lot more accounts than that? The off-site solution I have updates a lot more often than that, although that's only because only the really important stuff is backed up in that way; the stuff I truly need to survive my house burning down.

I take it that you don't have children? I'm almost done with that aspect of my life now, but every school year it feels like there's a new slate of apps, parent communication portals, etc. I need to manage these as well. It's way more often than twice a year for me. And it's accelerating.

I don't, and now I have yet another reason not to.
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