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KeePass – questionable security

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Re: KeePass – questionable security

#191

Post by deathanatos »

anewhnaccount wrote: post #35

http://www.passwordstore.org/

This stuck out to me:

> With pass, each password lives inside of a gpg encrypted file whose filename is the title of the website or resource that requires the password.

What the password goes to can potentially be _very_ sensitive. One of my side projects is a keyring manager; similarly, it feeds the data through GPG. However, the keyring is one file (i.e., all the stuff is rolled together). I also disagree with the design choice of taking the names of the objects on the keyring as a command line argument: they end up in history files. (This is the same argument, really; if you consider the name of the object on the keyring to be sensitive, then you don't want it as a filename (it's not encrypted) or as an arg (it's in a history file… not encrypted).)

Re: KeePass – questionable security

#193

Post by 9872 »

nivla wrote: post #127
tptacek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use and like 1Password.

Just to be clear this is not directed at you tptacek. However, I am genuinely confused at HN, whenever it comes to security/privacy most yell "Open Source Only" and yet a good chuck of them use 1Password, which I believe is closed source. It really doesn't make any sense. Why trust one over all the others? Obviously given that open source does not equate to security and closed source does not equate to vulnerabilitie…

The same reason many of us use Windows. All other things being equal, open source is better than closed source, but all other things are not equal. In the end, getting shit done is more important than open source. Unless you are RMS.

Re: KeePass – questionable security

#194

Post by tptacek »

sdrapkin wrote: post #189
tptacek wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, where I'm confused is, you seem comfortable using and endorsing something that by all accounts takes crypto design even less seriously than AgileBits did years ago. I'm not trying to needle you, I just don't follow where you're going with this.

I never claimed or implied that latest design of 1Pass repository is worse or even security-equivalent to KeePass. I simply pointed out that 1Pass team has made their share of mistakes (plural), so I have as much trust in their competence as, likely, in KeePass team. With author trust being a non-issue (humor me in this assumption), we must look at facts & evidence only. Both 1Pass and KeePass repositories are well-s…

You start out in a reasonable place but then rhetorically overplay your hand: I'm pretty sure they do HMAC their IV, (a) because they say they do and (b) because there are open source implementations of their file format that (i) do the HMAC verification and (ii) would not work properly if they weren't HMAC'ing their IV. You can check right now: it took 2 minutes to find the Python code that computes the HMAC.

It's a minor thing to be wrong about, but it's also something you could have checked yourself before dinging me about it. :)

The story of this whole thread culminates in a place where I trust 1Password a lot more than KeePass; KeePass knows they need a better cryptosystem, but retains a broken one. 1Password has an extensively documented file format with 3rd party implementations, the author of which format actually responds to academic research.

I'd still use KeePass before I used LastPass, though, and would still use KeePass before I used no password manager!

Re: KeePass – questionable security

#195

Post by TheDong »

cmdrfred wrote: post #92
sdrapkin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You store u/p to your Lawyer's website, which has a copy of your Will. You die and the Executor of your Estate tries to access the Lawyer's website, only to be met with "invalid password". It turns out that the kdbx on your private server got silently corrupted (ex. fs corruption) ~5 years prior to your death. However, your Dropbox backups only have 30 days of previous kdbx versions. Can your Executor handle the disa…

How are they cracking the 40+ char random alpha numeric password on my box? With fail2ban in place, and it's on a random port.

That answer does not inspire confidence.

1) Random port is not helping against a specific attacker. Get a real firewall 2) Fail2ban is not a real firewall 3) Keys only, no passwords. 40chars is nothing compared to a strong rsa key with a 40char password on it

Re: KeePass – questionable security

#196

Post by TheDong »

Grazester wrote: post #161

Honest question. What's wrong with the function? I have a similar function to ironically enough compare Hmacs in an encryption program I wrote in Java and C# When I release the source code for the java version I replaced my function with java's own Arrays.equals though

Timing attacks.

It's not a valid concern in this context, however, because an attacker attempting to bruteforce it can simply code the more efficient comparison and use it.

Timing attacks are a concern on network applications or when considering a block-box type attack.

Re: KeePass – questionable security

#197

Post by INTPenis »

Keepass was never meant for corporate use, that much I am positive about. So personally I use gpg through the pass(1) script.

However, for corporate use I must recommend siptrack, a Django-based webbapp with a xmlrpc gui that tries not so much to replace keepass but rather racktables and keepass.

So it's much more than password management but it uses pycrypto and doesn't try to re-invent encryption. Future plans have it moving to pynacl too.

Re: KeePass – questionable security

#199

Post by tptacek »

sinatra wrote: post #185
kijin wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With LastPass, your account password is your master password. Its hash is stored on their servers, and they have an opportunity to intercept the plaintext whenever you log in. With 1Password+Dropbox, Dropbox doesn't know your master password. It only ever sees the encrypted vault, and doesn't have any opportunity to intercept any plaintext. (If your password is strong enough, you could probably even get away with pos…

I use 2-step auth with LastPass. Although passwords are encrypted on client-side for LastPass too, I understand that if LastPass wants, they can get the master password or password for any specific site. All they need to do is change their client. However, considering 1Password is closed-sourced, if they want, they can do so too. Right? And if I think about "What is harder for hackers to get to: My encrypted password…

There is no straightforward way for AgileBits to quietly steal credentials from a specific target --- they'd have to publish an update that did that to their whole userbase, hope the target actually updates, and they would get caught. It is on the other hand trivial for LastPass to do that, for most of their users, because there is a normal usage flow for that product that involves typing a master password into an HTML PASSWORD input.

The problem is not open-source/closed-source so much as it is that convenient, centralized, web-based crypto tools are virtually never safe, and that's the problem LastPass has chosen to try to crack.

Re: KeePass – questionable security

#200

Post by kijin »

sinatra wrote: post #185
kijin wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With LastPass, your account password is your master password. Its hash is stored on their servers, and they have an opportunity to intercept the plaintext whenever you log in. With 1Password+Dropbox, Dropbox doesn't know your master password. It only ever sees the encrypted vault, and doesn't have any opportunity to intercept any plaintext. (If your password is strong enough, you could probably even get away with pos…

I use 2-step auth with LastPass. Although passwords are encrypted on client-side for LastPass too, I understand that if LastPass wants, they can get the master password or password for any specific site. All they need to do is change their client. However, considering 1Password is closed-sourced, if they want, they can do so too. Right? And if I think about "What is harder for hackers to get to: My encrypted password…

You log in every day to LastPass, giving them a lot more opportunity to intercept your password without changing anything on the client side. LastPass also has a web interface where you can log in, and you often need to log in there in order to make changes to your account. This can act as an additional attack vector if they were compromised.

If 1Password was compromised, on the other hand, they'd have to wait until you upgrade the client to the bugged version. As far as I can tell, they don't even have a web interface for you to log in.

Dropbox doesn't even come into the equation since it's just dumb storage. Someone who compromises Dropbox will only see a useless blob. The attacker would have to compromise both 1Password and Dropbox, as well as get you to install a compromised 1Password client, in order to get your encrypted passwords.

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