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1Password and the Crypto Wars

blog.agilebits.com

81–90 of 111 posts

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#81
post #21

In for a penny, in for a pound. If you care about security enough to use a password safe you might as well also use an open source solution that has even a remote chance of having its code looked at by more people than the ones trying to sell it to you. I mean, I know 1Password is all pretty and animated and things, but things like KeePass aren't so ugly as to be unusable.

KeePass is utterly unusable for ordinary users. Especially on non-Windows platforms, where it takes voodoo to make it even run.

Really? I find Keepass works pretty smoothly. On Windows, granted.

I did have trouble with it on OSX but the KeepassX client does ok.

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#82
post #35

DO NOT USE 1Password. If you care about security, there's absolutely no reason to use 1Password over an open source solution like KeePass. Even if 1Password doesn't have a backdoor now, nothing would stop NSA from inserting one and keep the owners quiet about it with a gag order. AgileBits is a US company, and so you cannot trust their security. Thank the US government for that.

> If you care about security, there's absolutely no reason to use 1Password over an open source solution like KeePass.

Uh, except it's Windows only? Sorry, I use 1Password only on my iPhone as if it were a hardware authenticator. No problems.

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#83
post #69

Back in April, there was an attack on 1Password that managed to exploit some flaws in its crypto scheme to achieve a sizable speedup. [1] To this day, they have not managed to rollout the new 1Password 4 Cloud Keychain that is supposed to fix these flaws. [2] Lots of smooth talk, but apparently security is not a blocker. 1: http://hashcat.net/forum/thread-2238.html 2: http://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/14780…

Isn't this the attack that reduced the strength of their PBKDF2 scheme by one (1) bit? Because they were unnecessarily calling PBKDF2 twice, where a normal system would have called it once and expanded the resulting key, resulting in exactly the same speed characteristics? Your snark would sting more if you knew what you were talking about. The reason nobody's hair lit on fire over this is that it's a stupid issue.

The speedup was apparently 4x, so rather 2 bit, or as the layman would say, only 1/4th the work. But thats not the point. If you can't trust them to deploy a fix to a stupid issue in half a year, why would you trust them to do it in a day should a serious issue arise?

But I agree, its a stupid issue. Snowden tells us endpoint security is the problem. So maybe the Windows 1Password client should stop

1) checking for updates over HTTP (no s here!)

   Bonus: you can specify the update URL in the response
   Bonus: you can specify parts of the dialogue shown to the user
2) download the update over HTTP

3) execute it with elevated rights without verifying it

This was maybe fixed in the last build from 2013-08-07:

    Improved security of automatic updates (using https:// when checking for a new version). Reported by David Thiel, iSEC Partners.
Since they use a CDN to distribute updates, these might still be downloaded over HTTP and still not be verified prior to running.

-- Update --

You got to be kidding me. So I upgraded my fake update server with a self-signed certificate (with a wrong CN, no less) and of course, the 1Password client happily accepts it.

Theres some good news, though. They now verify that the downloaded binary is signed (with their own key)!

But since I can control the update server that tells the client what to download, I can just supply the client with an old 1Password build that is still signed but does not implement the strong(isher) scheme in build #333. The installer doesn't complain and what user keeps track of build numbers anyway.

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#84
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used both KeePass and 1Password is not just about the pretty interface as you make it to be. Entire UX is much better. Also, even if some 3rd party looked at the code, it doesn't really matter because they are really transparent about the file storage format, there are even some open source cli tools to extract data. Also it is a fact that no data leaves your control. No server side storage or something like that.…

With LastPass, all data are encrypted locally on your machine so except if there is a backdoor in their extensions/desktop applications, you are normally pretty safe.

http://www.tobtu.com/lastpass.php why nobody should use lastpass

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#85
post #35

DO NOT USE 1Password. If you care about security, there's absolutely no reason to use 1Password over an open source solution like KeePass. Even if 1Password doesn't have a backdoor now, nothing would stop NSA from inserting one and keep the owners quiet about it with a gag order. AgileBits is a US company, and so you cannot trust their security. Thank the US government for that.

> If you care about security, there's absolutely no reason to use 1Password over an open source solution like KeePass. Uh, except it's Windows only? Sorry, I use 1Password only on my iPhone as if it were a hardware authenticator. No problems.

KeePass is open source. There are ports for every major OS. I used it on my android devices, for instance.

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#86
post #35

DO NOT USE 1Password. If you care about security, there's absolutely no reason to use 1Password over an open source solution like KeePass. Even if 1Password doesn't have a backdoor now, nothing would stop NSA from inserting one and keep the owners quiet about it with a gag order. AgileBits is a US company, and so you cannot trust their security. Thank the US government for that.

From the linked article, "We have developers in four separate countries: Canada ( AgileBits is a Canadian company ), the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands." ... reading comprehension … There are good password managers, then there's KeyPass. :/

[deleted]

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#87
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any good cross multi-device alternatives?

Preferably with my own server (owncloud?) as a central keychain?

There's https://yithlibrary.herokuapp.com/ for a self hosted LastPass clone but unfortunately there's no Firefox or Chrome addons yet.

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#88
post #69

Back in April, there was an attack on 1Password that managed to exploit some flaws in its crypto scheme to achieve a sizable speedup. [1] To this day, they have not managed to rollout the new 1Password 4 Cloud Keychain that is supposed to fix these flaws. [2] Lots of smooth talk, but apparently security is not a blocker. 1: http://hashcat.net/forum/thread-2238.html 2: http://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/14780…

Isn't this the attack that reduced the strength of their PBKDF2 scheme by one (1) bit? Because they were unnecessarily calling PBKDF2 twice, where a normal system would have called it once and expanded the resulting key, resulting in exactly the same speed characteristics? Your snark would sting more if you knew what you were talking about. The reason nobody's hair lit on fire over this is that it's a stupid issue.

More accurately, they did call PBKDF2 once, but PBKDF2 internally calls itself twice if you request a key larger than the hash output size. It "expands" the key by generating two and concatenating. It's a stupid bug, but it's a bug in the spec.

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#89
post #35

DO NOT USE 1Password. If you care about security, there's absolutely no reason to use 1Password over an open source solution like KeePass. Even if 1Password doesn't have a backdoor now, nothing would stop NSA from inserting one and keep the owners quiet about it with a gag order. AgileBits is a US company, and so you cannot trust their security. Thank the US government for that.

Is your entire argument for me to stop using 1Password because the NSA could (by your own assertion) put a backdoor in my app? Or do you have another, better reason? I could just not update 1Password, and then I'm never at risk for this supposed back door.

Re: 1Password and the Crypto Wars

#90
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you link to it please?

LastPass has not made a direct statement. On their forums, however, a customer asked where data was hosted and this post was made by the CEO: LastPass is "host proof" hosted meaning that your sensitive data is encrypted with a key we at LastPass NEVER have, removing many of the concerns PRISM raises with most cloud service providers. LastPass can't be forced to give the encryption key to your data as it has never hit…

They could release a new binary that does register encryption keys, and you would never know it. They could even lie (not that I mean they do it, but if you need security, it can't be from a closed source application).
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