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Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

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Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#81

Post by tomxor »

zokier wrote: post #64
tomxor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using a password manager without a master password is way more secure than not using a password manager at all. I disagree, diceware AND hardware security keys, is stronger, no password manager needed at all. However I agree the article is overblown. For most people, browser based password managers are probably a vast improvement, since most will likely never educate themselves on such things or accept the solution…

How does diceware reduce the need for password managers at all?

Because they are significantly more memorable than pw made from individually random chars without significantly reducing their strength.

I have a handful of diceware passwords for important accounts i need to remember, and find that pretty easy... the rest are throwaway level unimportant or I leave to email based login.

However I dictate password and security policies where I work, and don't have to adhere to stupid "change your pw every week" rules - so i realise this is not a solution for everyone working under different (stupid) conditions.

https://xkcd.com/936/

Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#82

Post by nl »

quickco wrote: post #25

A lot of the criticism of this article seems to be: “If they already have access to your local file system, you already have bigger problems” What about defence in depth? This article is suggesting an alternative, which are password managers such as 1Password. These Password managers do not suffer from the same weak key storage as the browser’s build-in password managers. So this article is bringing attention to a we…

Many think integrated password managers create more vulnerabilities than they solve. https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/passmgrs.html is a reasonable overview of this.

> So this article is bringing attention to a weakness in the browser’s built-in password managers, and suggesting a very viable and easy-to-adopt solution.

Because many actual experts disagree it is a weakness

> Why the strong criticism of this article?

The advice tries to make it out like browser suppliers are doing this to lower security for some unknown reason, whereas actually their model is safer than what is recommended.

It is possible to argue against browser suppliers here, but you need to look at their arguments for doing it that way. This article doesn't do that.

Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#83

Post by nl »

olliej wrote: post #31
plaguepilled wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS TOTP is indeed bad and your suspicion is well warranted. Its a lazy way to implement 2-factor authentication and exposes the user to MITM attacks as well as a host of other nastiness. U2F (stuff like what Google Authenticator does) is way better and less phone dependent. The only reason a team would opt for TOTP if they had the resources to implement U2F is because its a good way to get your phone number. Edit: e…

I disagree here, suspicion is not warranted - I'd prefer that they support additional non-sms 2FA paths, but supporting SMS based 2FA has many benefits for a company beyond being "lazy" SMS is vastly better than nothing, and it has the benefit of not requiring users install random software that they (a) don't know how to install, (b) don't know how to use, (c) don't have a recent enough device to use, (d) you don't n…

TOTP should run on any smartphone, including phones that are much older than 2 years.

Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#84

Post by GekkePrutser »

denton-scratch wrote: post #67
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have misunderstood the threat. When an attacker gains a foothold in a corporate environment, they will immediately try to find any accessible credentials to assist in lateral movement. If the user's passwords to the rest of the corporate systems are sitting unprotected in a browser password store, it is a gold mine. Yes, they should have 2fa and single sign on and so on, but many places don't. The article isn't t…

> When an attacker gains a foothold in a corporate environment, they will immediately try to find any accessible credentials to assist in lateral movement. /me not a security expert. But isn't this the mistake I used to make for years: to believe that the hacker is a human, responding to his environment and making decisions? It took me a long time to acknowledge that nearly all network attacks are automated, and unle…

The big news headlines like wannacry were fully automated. But one-trick ponies. If you had patched you were fine. What made it a problem was that so many hadn't.

But the sinister targeted ones where you only find out because someone is selling terabytes of confidential data, those are usually highly targeted and manual. It's very hard to automate and stay under the radar.

You need protection against both.

Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#85

Post by denton-scratch »

olliej wrote: post #77
denton-scratch wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should be using token based authentication be they dongles or phone and PC's secure elements. Phone? Really? I regard my smartphone as the least-secure piece of computing equipment in my posession. I certainly don't trust it to secure anything. A phone isn't a token; it happens to be "something you own", so some sites treat a phone as if it were a security token. This is a problem I encounter mainly on UK gover…

I had assumed that at this point all android phones have got some equivalent to the secure element present in all apple products produced in the last 5+ years, if they don't that's bananas. Assuming that, a phone is likely one of the most secure devices that you own.

Having a "secure element", enclave or whatever, doesn't mean that some rando TPA app is using it. I'm not qualified to inspect the source-code of Android apps. As far as I'm conceerned, these enclaves aren't for my protection; they're there to protect the interests of the device's owners (which isn't me).

A smartphone OS runs under the supervision of another OS, which is proprietary - source-code not supplied. A lot of the hardware is also proprietary, each component having its own (opaque) firmware blob. The device has telephony and internet connectivity. The connectivity providers behave as if they own the device, install software without warning, and surreptitiously inject content.

If I'm not competent to analyse the device myself (and I'm not), then I'm dependent on third-parties to confirm the device is secure. How many smartphone reviews have you read recently that focused on security, rather than how shiny the device is, how good the cameras are, or how good the screen is? I don't recall ever seeing a review that paid any attention to security.

These are opaque devices, with a huge attack surface. It makes no sense to me to describe it as "one of the most secure devices that you own".

Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#86

Post by throwawayffffas »

There is a lot of backlash against this article, which to be fair is kind of poorly written, but still makes a valid point. Encrypting something and writing the key on the same place is pointless.

These browsers encrypting the passwords with a key saved on the device is security theater and has to be called out.

Security is not all or nothing, most people don't have full disk encryption so their passwords are sitting there completely unencrypted, trivially retrieved from anyone with physical access.

Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#87

Post by UncleMeat »

plaguepilled wrote: post #47
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be mixing and matching acronyms that don't really make sense. "TOTP" means "Time-based one time password". It's where the server and client (like the Google Authenticator app) share a secret and then the one-time password changes every 30 seconds. "SMS TOTP" doesn't make sense because SMS codes can be anything random that is sent out to the user attempting to log in. As I stated above, the Google Authenti…

You are completely right, I misspoke (mistyped?) in my previous comment. Apologies for the error. What I referred to as U2F is TOTP as you say, and what I referred to as TOTP is plaintext OTPs. That's an embarrassing mistake. What I had meant to highlight is that SMS based authentication is more vulnerable than an authenticator app because the SMS exposes data that can be intercepted or collected by a third party. A…

This is a modest but often overblown risk. SIM swapping is easy but scales badly. SMS interception malware exists but isn’t widely installed and you rely on the malware not being able to root your phone or get accessibility access to your screen.

But most importantly, both TOTP and SMS are vulnerable to phishing - by far the most common method of stealing second factors.

Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#88

Post by lucideer »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #86

There is a lot of backlash against this article, which to be fair is kind of poorly written, but still makes a valid point. Encrypting something and writing the key on the same place is pointless. These browsers encrypting the passwords with a key saved on the device is security theater and has to be called out. Security is not all or nothing, most people don't have full disk encryption so their passwords are sitting…

> makes a valid point. Encrypting something and writing the key on the same place is pointless.

The backlash is due to this not being a valid point. Security best practice has long moved on from dogmatic binaries and treating humans like robots.

Encrypting something in transit and writing the key in plaintext locally, while not ideal, is far from pointless. Building perfectly secure systems that nobody will use is what's pointless.

> trivially retrieved from anyone with physical access

Pretty bold using the word "trivial" here: physical access is not the primary threat model for average password manager use.

Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#89

Post by throwawayffffas »

lucideer wrote: post #88
throwawayffffas wrote: post #86

There is a lot of backlash against this article, which to be fair is kind of poorly written, but still makes a valid point. Encrypting something and writing the key on the same place is pointless. These browsers encrypting the passwords with a key saved on the device is security theater and has to be called out. Security is not all or nothing, most people don't have full disk encryption so their passwords are sitting…

> makes a valid point. Encrypting something and writing the key on the same place is pointless. The backlash is due to this not being a valid point. Security best practice has long moved on from dogmatic binaries and treating humans like robots. Encrypting something in transit and writing the key in plaintext locally, while not ideal, is far from pointless. Building perfectly secure systems that nobody will use is wh…

It's not in transit, it's the equivalent of storing your passwords in plaintext, which I don't think can be actually defended as a good practice.

Regardless the question that arises which is a lot more worrisome is what happens when you turn on synchronization on these browsers? Do they encrypt the passwords with a key only you know? Or do they just ship the "encrypted" passwords along with the key, so that your passwords are now essentially plaintext on their servers?

Re: Browser password managers – flawed security, by design

#90

Post by zokier »

tomxor wrote: post #81
zokier wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does diceware reduce the need for password managers at all?

Because they are significantly more memorable than pw made from individually random chars without significantly reducing their strength. I have a handful of diceware passwords for important accounts i need to remember, and find that pretty easy... the rest are throwaway level unimportant or I leave to email based login. However I dictate password and security policies where I work, and don't have to adhere to stupid…

I have about 200ish passwords in my password manager. No matter how memorable any of those is individually, remembering 200 secure secrets is not practical. Nevermind the fact that many of those are used extremely rarely, good luck rembering diceware password that you use once in couple of years
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