Chrome's insane password security strategy

Sometimes you get glimpses into the inner sanctums of Google that make it seem like it's a culture of robots.

Their first responses to outrage over the Google Maps cars they'd sent out to hoover people's wi-fi information were similarly obtuse about the mysterious ways of the non-machines: It's all information that was freely available to anyone who happened to have a fleet of packet-sniffing vehicles anyway, so what's the big deal?

With Google Glass they seem clueless on both sides of the equation: Never mind the role that facial symmetry plays in beauty or the billion-dollars industries that have sprung up to relieve people of their despised eyeglasses, more data is always better, affirmative? And why would even silly water-machines mind being always photographed everywhere? In many senses they already are! Jeepers can extermination day not come quickly enough.

And now this, here. Yes a given all-knowing cyborg entity could steal a "novice's" passwords with or without Chrome's help. But the easier you make it, the more it will happen. Meanwhile Google doesn't help its case with the clearly deceptive wording within the menus that make this possible. But mainly, our being from Google here seems genuinely baffled as to why this skeeves humans out so much. It just. Does. Not. Compute!

It is their seeming contempt for their customers coupled with a bizarre tin-eared bafflement about aspects of human nature the rest of the world seemingly grasps intuitively that often make for... well, entertainment at any rate; this story is presently top-of-fold on Techmeme. But it also is a window into a massive blind spot that could hobble the company.

My house has a front door which can be locked. I often leave it unlocked when I am out in the yard (and thus need access through the door on a minute-by-minute basis) or when I have guests over.

I side my house I have safes, medicine cabinets and a gun rack. Those things are locked all the time, and I only unlock the cabinet when I need to use the items inside the secure container.

So, too, I have a use account login. Sometimes I will hand my computer to a friend (or they sit at the computer, same thing) so they can do stuff. At no point does my friend's physical access to the computer imply that they need access to my bank account details. So those credentials are locked up in 1password to prevent casual theft.

Keychain Access and 1password both require a master password to unlock the ability to see stored passwords.

The argument about "having physical access negates security" is missing the point: there are different forms of physical access. I won't let visitors plug in random USB, FireWire or Thunderbolt devices for example. They have use of the machine, they have physical access. But if any of them made moves to dunk my computer in liquid nitrogen before removing the RAM, I would shoot them.

If the computer is locked, my password safe is locked. If someone steals the computer (or an NSA agent inades my house to freeze and steal the RAM), the key material is encrypted and thus still not accessible to casual inspection.

The attitude of "the NSA can break the encryption so it is not even worth hiding things from the visitor casually using your computer" is defeatist.

Rethink your assumptions. What are you protecting against? Do I need to switch to a guest account to prevent casual guests from seeing my credentials? How does that aid convenience?

This is really, really narrowminded.

You're thinking of security in the sense of some hacker or someone who has technical abilities.

What about the jealous ex-bf? He asked to use the gf's computer when they were dating, easily grabbed ALL of her password info and now she has to change everything when they break up. You're giving complete technophiles the ability to nab passwords. The question is WHY - what utility is there to make these show up in plain text over just prompting for a master password? What's the use case that you NEED to make these visible so easily?

It's also a terrible, terrible excuse to say 'well, there are other ways to get that info so our security flaw isn't an issue since it's already trivial'.

The fact of the matter is that you should at the very least require the master password to make these other passwords visible. There should be SOME authentication being done here.

What would this conversation be like if we were talking about gmail.com? You think it'd be OK to show in plan text a person's gmail password in the Settings page. I mean, if you logged in then of course you are the only person who should be looking at it.

I'm inclined to agree with Justin here.

I mean, he's absolutely right in that if you have physical access, or if you have OS account access to a computer, it really doesn't matter what you do, your shit isn't safe any more.

The argument of a 'crime of opportunity' doesn't play out in the digital world. Everything in the malware world is so automated and the scenario of 'If there are exposed passwords on this particular machine, I'll take them' just doesn't ever play out.

To that end, while it certainly seems awkward from a 3rd party perspective, I'm kind of agree with Google on this one.

So you log out of your computer every time you give your computer to your wife?