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Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

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Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#151

Post by MrGilbert »

Aicy wrote: post #148

I self-host bitwarden and you should too! You get the premium features for free when you self host This is an excellent step by step tutorial that tells you how to self host it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCJA1F72izc

No, you don’t get the premium features "for free": https://bitwarden.com/help/licensing-on-premise/

What you are referring to is essentially a compatible server implementation called "Vaultwarden" (formerly Bitwarden_rs), where the original company will see no money whatsoever.

Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#152

Post by rstuart4133 »

philliphaydon wrote: post #24
ywain wrote: post #11

Oof, my Bitwarden account was created a while ago and was set to only 5,000 iterations. You can see and change the number of iterations here: https://vault.bitwarden.com/#/settings/security/security-key... (or if you don't trust links for something like your password manager: log into your web vault, click on the top-right dropdown menu, then Account settings > Security > Keys). I've updated it to 600,000 iterations…

Thank you! Mine was also set to 5000, updated to 600k.

A way to think about the difference you just made is, you increased the difficulty of cracking your password by 600000 / 5000 = 120. Making your attacker guess 7 extra bits (well, slightly under) would have the same effect, so that translates to a slightly under 7 bits of entropy. Appending two randomly chosen digits to your password would have about the same effect.

Those first 5000 iterations added over 12 bits of entropy.

The article is complaining about not adding an extra 100,000 iterations which would double the difficulty, so he's effectively berating them over 1 bit of entropy.

Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#153

Post by kryptiskt »

kadoban wrote: post #16
soheil wrote: post #3

If you think it's ok to be putting all your passwords on some random server owned by a random company then I don't know if you care about any other design flaws. This also includes the websites you visited and just happened to either accidentally or on purpose save your login. Now multiply the privacy/security implications of that when said company is pumped and dumped by a major VC.

Even a fairly middling password manager implementation is better than just about any other strategy that anyone is likely to use. Especially because for the vast majority, the other strategy is going to be reusing the same password ~everywhere and if you're lucky the might use a special password for their bank or something.

My biggest complaint is that password managers treat passwords as something precious. They're the opposite of that, in most cases they don't even have to be remembered at all, because there are easy password reset flows and long session times. Just get a new password if you need to log in from a new device or the session ended.

Sure, you need to know how to log into your email, but that isn't any more passwords to remember than the password manager master password.

I don't rely on just that, but between the reset flows and the browsers built-in password store, I don't really see what I gain by adding an external point of failure.

Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#154

Post by Aicy »

TylerE wrote: post #38
avsteele wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your first two statements are correct I can't see how the third can't be. If we choose our password from only ~24 chars then you can get the same effect of 100K iterations form just 4 more characters, or ~1 more dictionary word. That doesn't seem excessive

10ms (or whatever) of computer time is a lot cheaper than 2 seconds of mine

Not for the company paying for the compute

Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#155

Post by tlamponi »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #145
tlamponi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I’ll use a different password manager I do that. I use pass https://www.passwordstore.org/ > to store and get my BitWarden master PW. Pass is encrypted by a PGP key residing on my HW token/smart card and encrypted with a good but (for me) memorable PW. In my case it's not really due to paranoia, but as I already had pass in use for critical and very important credentials before, and as I 1) was only evaluatin…

I'm always surprised that people disclose so easily their whole security pipeline on HN, especially when their account has their real information.

Yeah, a developer owning a YubiKey and using a password manager, that's really revealing...

Unless you're in for the criminal acts (and their repercussion), i.e., stealing my token and my keys to wherever my workstation stands and then torturing out both, my workstations and key's PW from my mind, it won't really help you...

Or what did I really reveal with what actual real world implication that can compromise the security of (which?) systems I can access?

IMO, if your "security pipeline" can be compromised due to documenting it (not the credentials used to access it!), even publicly, it wasn't that good of a "security pipeline" in the first place.

Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#156

Post by kadoban »

kryptiskt wrote: post #153
kadoban wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a fairly middling password manager implementation is better than just about any other strategy that anyone is likely to use. Especially because for the vast majority, the other strategy is going to be reusing the same password ~everywhere and if you're lucky the might use a special password for their bank or something.

My biggest complaint is that password managers treat passwords as something precious. They're the opposite of that, in most cases they don't even have to be remembered at all, because there are easy password reset flows and long session times. Just get a new password if you need to log in from a new device or the session ended. Sure, you need to know how to log into your email, but that isn't any more passwords to re…

> I don't rely on just that, but between the reset flows and the browsers built-in password store, I don't really see what I gain by adding an external point of failure.

I mean, a browser "password store" _is_ a password manager. It's just usually not a very featureful one.

Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#157

Post by mk_stjames »

crumpled wrote: post #124

I once leaned heavily upon Google Chrome as my password manager, but then I discovered that you could view the passwords in Chrome for Windows by knowing my Windows login password, instead of my Google password. This feels off topic a little, but in all the discussion of password managers lately, I seldom hear people talk about the web browser being a good/bad idea. It almost feels like they are slipping through the…

I noticed this as well, I used to do the same and so did everyone I know. I stopped used any Chrome based solution after seeing that if my Chrome was sync'd to my phone, and my phone was unlocked, someone could open Chrome on my phone and, with only my phone's PIN to unlock the vault, view all my passwords. This seemed super weak. So I switched to a different method of storing and generating passwords. But as far as I know, most people I know just use Chrome's password manager. And you know... I haven't ever heard of a Google breach where vault databases have been breached...

Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#158

Post by dns_snek »

Aicy wrote: post #148

I self-host bitwarden and you should too! You get the premium features for free when you self host This is an excellent step by step tutorial that tells you how to self host it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCJA1F72izc

This is extremely irresponsible advice for anyone who isn't already skilled in securing their systems and keeping their software up to date. Skimming through that video, there's no thought given to securing the OS, "pi" account is effectively given root access (through "docker" group) with a default password of "raspberry", network access is unrestricted, there's no thought given to secure remote access (e.g. a VPN), there are no auto-updates for either the OS or vaultwarden, leaving you exposed in case of future vulnerabilities.

Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#159

Post by j1elo »

jchw wrote: post #149
rstuart4133 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both Bitwarden and LastPass should improve this situation by making the iteration count automatically increase over time. Bitwarden does let you increase the number of PBKDF2 iterations through a setting, they they also provide this warning: > Warning: Setting your KDF iterations too high could result in poor performance when logging into (and unlocking) Bitwarden on devices with slower CPUs. We recommend that you…

Nit: yes, it's true that making the iteration count high could actually make some devices unlock very slowly. BUT: - This only occurs when performing key derivation, i.e. when you're unlocking. It does not matter once the key is in memory. Therefore, it's actually OK if it takes a few seconds. When unlocking with biometrics, the key derivation function is not used, so on mobile devices, this occurs even less often. -…

Bitwarden already takes a couple of instants more than I'd like, each time the vault is unlocked in my phone. It's always one of those moments where I'm doing something that requires a new login, and usually the step of having to derive attention to the password manager is an undesired distraction, agravated by watching an idle screen for at least a couple of seconds while the vault decides to open, and at last I can search for my secret and continue what I was doing...

I do not use biometric because they fail a lot on me (fuzzy fingerprints due to stuff)

It's not even a nitpicky complaint I'm dropping in the internet, it does really bother me absolutely every time. Making it even slower, please no.

Re: Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

#160

Post by j1elo »

ywain wrote: post #11

Oof, my Bitwarden account was created a while ago and was set to only 5,000 iterations. You can see and change the number of iterations here: https://vault.bitwarden.com/#/settings/security/security-key... (or if you don't trust links for something like your password manager: log into your web vault, click on the top-right dropdown menu, then Account settings > Security > Keys). I've updated it to 600,000 iterations…

Why are you upping it up that much? I guess "too much is not a bad thing" in this case, and Bitwarden itself says: "We recommend a value of 100,000 or more.".

When I see that I read: "With our knowledge of security and encryption, which by the way is much greater than yours, we consider that 100,000 is a perfectly safe number and a good middle point so go ahead and use it".

Am I wrong to think like that? My Master password is a battery-horse-staple thing, but not with 12 words as some other commenter says; that's absurdly long and would be too difficult for me to remember. I usually strive for around 18-20 characters, that's already in the verge of me forgetting it. I use incorrect or derived words of my own (so not really existing in dictionaries).

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