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Chrome's insane password security strategy

blog.elliottkember.com

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Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#51
post #3

has op used any other browser before? They all store pwd in the same way

> They all store pwd in the same way

No.

1. Safari stores its passwords in Keychain (OSX's built-in password manager), in which a master password (the account's password) is required to get cleartexts. Safari itself does not give direct access to the passwords list.

2. Firefox has a master password option.

Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#52
I had never given much thought to the implications of saving my passwords in Chrome so thanks for pointing this out.

Now I'd like to remove my saved passwords but visiting chrome://settings/passwords and removing them one at a time will take forever; can anyone tell me how to remove them in bulk?

Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#53
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This probably is a mistake, far from harmless, but wouldn't it be better to point it out to the Chrome team and try to get it fixed. Have you logged a bug? https://code.google.com/p/chromium/ or Tools > Report an issue...

A mistake..? So they accidentally wrote code to copy your credentials and create a new keychain item which Chrome has permanent access to?

They're importing Safari data, so I'd expect them to copy the credentials to a new item to avoid conflicting with Safari managing that data, and creating a new keychain item with permanent access would be the correct response for 'Always Allow', so isn't it possible that's a mistake that they don't correctly respond to the Allow button? I agree storing the credentials outside keychain is not desirable, but again probably that has to do with cross-platform requirements rather than malice on the part of Google.

Have you reported the bug and asked the Chrome team about it?

In contrast to adwords defaulting to automatic payments and auto-bidding, or tracking users across the web universally over all the google services, or pushing people to use G+ everywhere, this wouldn't really benefit Google would it? I'm sure Google do lots of evil things, but I can't see any upside to them in this, and lots of downside.

Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#54
post #3

has op used any other browser before? They all store pwd in the same way

Firefox does it better, allowing you to set a 'master password'. A fresh launch of the browser can't autofill fields until the master password is provided. The settings page for saved passwords won't show them in plaintext unless the master password is provided again.

It's not very onerous and it prevents quick, casual swiping of passwords. (Sophisticated attackers could navigate to a fresh login prompt and use DOM-manipulation... but that's also more time-consuming and doable by far fewer people.)

Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#55
post #36
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox does have a master password.

I really, really wish there was some way to set it so it wouldn't access your cookies or something unless you put in the master password. Always seemed like a bit of a flaw that while you can't log in to other sites or view the passwords, you could still access any sites you were already logged in to.

Well, websites control their cookies, so it's up to them to determine how secure they want to be. They can even encrypt them if they wanted to.

Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#56
Showed this to the team I work with. Never seen so many jaws hit the floor. This is really bad.

Passwords should never be viewable through a browser settings page. If you forget a password for a site, then the site provides a mechanism for password recovery/reset.

Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#57
post #10

To those saying this isn't insane... you are wrong. I can open anyone's chrome browser and access their passwords without a master password? That's plain fucked up. (I realise I could visit sites and use password reset, but this is so frictionless as to be insane)

It's especially insane on OSX which already has an OS-wide and ~secure (more secure than this anyway) password manager: Keychain.

Note that Chrome is using keychain and that you can dump the complete keychain data with all passwords decrypted via terminal anyway. You don't need any third party software ala Chrome installed. E.g.:

    security find-internet-password -g -s news.ycombinator.com
Klick allow and that's it. The master password question for showing individual passwords in the Keychain.app does not protect your passwords.

As others said: don't let anybody use your computer if you're logged in (have the keychain(s) unlocked).

Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#58
post #52

I had never given much thought to the implications of saving my passwords in Chrome so thanks for pointing this out. Now I'd like to remove my saved passwords but visiting chrome://settings/passwords and removing them one at a time will take forever; can anyone tell me how to remove them in bulk?

Select the first, scroll down, hold shift and select the last, click the delete button of any row and all will be deleted.

Don't forget to turn of the option to save passwords, and optionally install a password manager extension (I use 1Password).

Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#59
IMO if a user opts in for auto-fill, they admit that anyone having access to the browser can sign into any of their "protected" accounts. And thus, for a browser to store passwords and auto-fill them in (as plain text) is not the real problem.

The problem with what Chrome is doing is that it not only allows anyone to access your "protected" resources (if they have physical access to your browser), but that they can easily peek at, and possibly export those password for use elsewhere (say on entirely different machines / apps) without you knowing or detecting this - since by then, they don't need physical access to your browser. This IMO is the BIG FLAW!

Re: Chrome's insane password security strategy

#60
post #52

I had never given much thought to the implications of saving my passwords in Chrome so thanks for pointing this out. Now I'd like to remove my saved passwords but visiting chrome://settings/passwords and removing them one at a time will take forever; can anyone tell me how to remove them in bulk?

Select the first, scroll down, hold shift and select the last, click the delete button of any row and all will be deleted. Don't forget to turn of the option to save passwords, and optionally install a password manager extension (I use 1Password).

Thanks, the UI doesn't make it very clear that you can select rows so I missed that.

I use 1Password religiously but until now I'd been lazily saving passwords in Chrome as well to avoid the hassle of entering my master password. I feel slightly ashamed that I just assumed Chrome stored them "securely" and didn't give it any more thought.

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