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Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

donjon.ledger.com

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Re: Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

#112
post #35
post #5

I use Bitwarden and it's open source. Switched over from LastPass and haven't regretted it since

Wouldn't be a HN password manager thread without someone randomly plugging Bitwarden when it has nothing to do with the actual topic :)

It's somewhat related because OSS password generator logic has better observability than proprietary products.

Re: Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

#113
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't fully trust getRandomValues, you can collect entropy in JavaScript and then hash everything you got using something like Blake2b. Touch/mouse inputs time and positions can give a few bits of entropy for example.

I can't imagine a situation when you don't trust getRandomValues, but trust touch/mouse inputs. If your getRandomValues is untrusted, why would you trust the whole JS runtime that implements it? If you think there's a Debian-like bug with the system PRNG, then you can't even trust the TLS connection that downloaded your JS code.

I think it's possible that TLS is functional, but getRandomValues is hacked/broken. A popular browser extension sold or given away to a hacker could inject everywhere the following code for example:

window.crypto.getRandomValues = (arrayBufferView) => arrayBufferView.fill(4);

For sure using more entropy from JS will not do much in case of a targeted attack that did compromise the downloaded code or the runtime, but the scenario of a larger scale attack on WebCrypto is what I was thinking about.

Re: Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

#114

> It means every instance of Kaspersky Password Manager in the world will generate the exact same password at a given second. Whoa. That's just ... Wow.

New in Russia, Kaspersky was used to be known as one of the places where the smartest, math-savvy developers went. So either they have completely changed in the last few years, or it was completely intentional.

Re: Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

#115
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the xkcd comic about this is still accurate, being that it's generally safer to have longer passwords regardless of how it's formatted. https://xkcd.com/936/ I recently signed up for a ticketing website to buy tickets for a concert and was appalled that the site wouldn't accept my 50+ character generated password... I had to enter something between 8 and 15 characters. Still seems to me that "^Zh7*2wNfRG7…

> I wonder if the xkcd comic about this is still accurate, being that it's generally safer to have longer passwords regardless of how it's formatted. Indeed, that is what I am wondering. If the double length offsets that it is not random. Twice the length is quite a lot, but it's also not random any more.

The comic is still accurate and always will be. It's just a mathematical law, even though it uses a popular display of it.

What you are wondering about is the size of base of the exponentiation. Let's look into that.

If you use individual, unrelated letters, this is 26 (or 52 when you allow uppercase, or 62 if you also allow numbers). At e.g. 12 letter, this is 62 to the power of 12. At 16 letters, it is 62 to the 16.

If you use words (as the comic proposes), then the dictionary size will be the base (in this case, 4000 or so). You have fewer words, so entropy is 4000 to the 4.

If you use phonologically grouped words or syllables, the base size is their number. I'm not a linguist, but I'd guess it is somewhere around 100 or so. If a syllable is 2 to 3 letters long and you use 32 letters, you get something like 12 syllables. Entropy is 100 to the 12.

Re: Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

#116

> It means every instance of Kaspersky Password Manager in the world will generate the exact same password at a given second. Whoa. That's just ... Wow.

New in Russia, Kaspersky was used to be known as one of the places where the smartest, math-savvy developers went. So either they have completely changed in the last few years, or it was completely intentional.

Kaspersky is a former KGB officer

And, as everyone in the former USSR knows, there is no such thing as a former KGB officer

Re: Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

#117
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine a situation when you don't trust getRandomValues, but trust touch/mouse inputs. If your getRandomValues is untrusted, why would you trust the whole JS runtime that implements it? If you think there's a Debian-like bug with the system PRNG, then you can't even trust the TLS connection that downloaded your JS code.

I think it's possible that TLS is functional, but getRandomValues is hacked/broken. A popular browser extension sold or given away to a hacker could inject everywhere the following code for example: window.crypto.getRandomValues = (arrayBufferView) => arrayBufferView.fill(4); For sure using more entropy from JS will not do much in case of a targeted attack that did compromise the downloaded code or the runtime, but t…

If an extension can modify getRandomValues, then all your other code is also untrusted, you can't work around it by using other methods to generate randomness.

Re: Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

#118
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's possible that TLS is functional, but getRandomValues is hacked/broken. A popular browser extension sold or given away to a hacker could inject everywhere the following code for example: window.crypto.getRandomValues = (arrayBufferView) => arrayBufferView.fill(4); For sure using more entropy from JS will not do much in case of a targeted attack that did compromise the downloaded code or the runtime, but t…

If an extension can modify getRandomValues, then all your other code is also untrusted, you can't work around it by using other methods to generate randomness.

I know. But the likelyhoood of a targeted attack on my code is much lower.

Re: Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

#119
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall this was an issue too for certain RSA tokens.

That was because some RSA tokens had identical seeds, it was only affecting some of the older time based tokens.

Precisely what I recall now -- the reason behind it I had forgotten. Thanks!

Re: Kaspersky Password Manager: All your passwords are belong to us

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bias simply weakens your password. If you generate long elaborate passwords then they can resist some of these flaws but the point is you don't want to introduce a flaw when they are simpler and better solutions out there. Mistakes are natural, you want to provide the utmost resistance to such exploits which can stack up to become viable.

What I've been wondering for a long time is how do these two passwords compare: hiKxChDiaHNAtgVz vis-à-vis : kähdikyylkönekkimahdakerttaksa One is a 16 random `[a-zA-Z0-9]` characters, the other is a 32 character long nonce word, containing and among others that conforms to Finnish phonology, but otherwise is devoid of any meaning and phonology but easier to remember to speakers of Finnish. One is a 16. Does 32 char…

It depends on your threat model. The simplest analysis assumes that the attacker knows how you are generating your password.

There are 36^16 possible passwords with the first scheme. I don't know how you generated the second. One way of doing it would be to generate all valid Finnish syllables and select randomly from that. If the number of possible syllables raised to the power of the number of syllables in your password is greater than 36^16, then it's more secure.

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