Link: https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/16/password_managers/

Researchers demo weaknesses affecting some of the most popular options Academics say they found a series of flaws affecting three popular password managers, all of which claim to protect user credentials in the event that their servers are compromised.…

You probably can't trust anything if it's compromised

Well the specific point here is that these companies claim that a server hack won't reveal your passwords since they're encrypted and decrypted on your local device so the server only sees the encrypted version. Apparently this isn't completely true.

Yeah, the title there really doesn't reflect the article text. It should be "you probably can't trust your password manager if the remote servers it uses are compromised".

Since the summary doesn't say which three popular password managers:

As one of the most popular alternatives to Apple and Google's own password managers, which together dominate the market, the researchers found Bitwarden was most susceptible to attacks, with 12 working against the open-source product. Seven distinct attacks worked against LastPass, and six succeeded in Dashlane.

People really use these apps? I mean...here are all my passwords? ...just like that?

Hell, my kids tutor wanted my bank account to withdraw each month. I said, 'fuck no...not unless we're banging each other every night with a prenup!'

Your tutor asked for access... To your bank account?

What's a metaphor allegory?

Bitwarden. Shit.

Did you know water is wet?

Which in turn is based off of KeePass, right? So double shit?

Breaking news, rain is wet.

I store my passwords on a flash drive with KeepassXC. How about you compromise that server... Oh wait a minute, no server?

https://www.passwordstore.org/

no, Bitwarden isn’t “based off” anything

I suggest KeepassXC, I like it. Can use it with TOTP too

These attacks are more around the encryption and all require a fully malicious server. It sounds like Bitwarden is taking these seriously and personally I'd still strongly prefer it to any closed source solution where there could be many more unknown but undiscovered security concerns.

Using a local solution is always most secure, but imo you should first ask yourself if you trust your own security practices and whether you have sufficient hardware redundancy to be actually better. I managed to lose the private key to some Bitcoin about a decade ago due to trying to be clever with encryption and local redundant copies.

Further, with the prevalence of 2FA even if their server was somehow fully compromised as long as you use a different authenticator app than Bitwarden you're not at major risk anyways. With how poorly the average person manages their password security this hurdle alone is likely enough to stop all but attacks targeted specifically at you as an individual.

Thats really disappointing. At least the selfhosted version means it would have to be a heavily targeted attack.

Bitwarden says all issues have already been addressed.

https://bitwarden.com/blog/security-through-transparency-eth-zurich-audits-bitwarden-cryptography/

Yes, although it sounds like they haven't finished fixing some of them:

All issues have been addressed by Bitwarden. Seven of which have been resolved or are in active remediation by the Bitwarden team. The remaining three issues have been accepted as intentional design decisions necessary for product functionality.

Edit:
There's more information about the specific threats and remediation steps in the PDF report linked at the end of the Bitwarden blog post:

https://bitwarden.com/assets/Kki4W785JIPOdFj6EeWB5/1e74e924febb4c6a5ad03eed23b92d23/pwmgr_paper__1_-combinedÂ__1_.pdf

Ah, great, thank you! Carrying on...

How do you recommend people sync between devices? What about devices that, for security reasons, do not allow flash drives or any external device to be plugged in?

I don't have the self hosting maturity to share my db across my devices yet. I need to get on that.

I have my keepass file in a samba share on my raspberry pi running wireguard. But it's easier just using nextcloud. Anyway, the file is encrypted.

Yess!
I store the keepass vault on my nextcloud
On iOS and macOS, I use Strongbox pro (one time purchase), as it integrates beautifully into the apple ecosystem using its APIs.
On linux and windows free KeepassXC with browser plug-ins
On Android I use the free keePassDX which, like strongbox, uses the android APIs for passwords

And keepass is perfectly cloud ready by placing the kdbx file into your cloud storage and sync using webDav or similar.

Anyone got a good suggestion for a self hosted option? Ideally one that has a good iOS app and a web interface.

You can self-host Bitwarden. Or there's the Vaultwarden implementation of the Bitwarden API.

Built on rust you say???

With vault/bitwarden the client handles that sharing for you.

As long as your copy isn't a trojan.

https://cybersecuritynews.com/hackers-weaponize-keepass-password-manager/

Anything against keepass

You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The facts of life, the facts of life.

There's a time you got to go and show
You're growin' now you know about
The facts of life, the facts of life.

When the world never seems
to be livin up to your dreams
And suddenly you're finding out
the facts of life are all about you, you.

Syncthing is great for syncing things like keepass dbs

KeePass features a built-in synchronization mechanism. I store my password file on google drive for ease of access on multiple devices. I set up triggers (on save, on custom button) to sync between the local copy and the cloud copy, using this guide: https://keepass.info/help/kb/trigger_examples.html#dbsync

Not a turnkey solution, but once setup it works like a charm.

Next do proton pass

Looking through, it seems like for the most part these are very niche and/or require the user to be using SSO or enterprise recovery options and/or try to change and rotate keys or resync often. I think few people using this for personal would be interacting with that attack surface or accepting organizational invites, but it is serious for organizations (probably why they’re trying quickly to address this).

Honestly I think a server being incognito controlled and undetected in bitwardens fleet while also performing these attacks is, unlikely? Certainly less likely than passwords being stolen from individual site hacks or probably even banks. Like at that point, it would just be easier to do these types of manipulations directly on bank accounts or crypto wallets or email accounts than here, but then again, if you crack a wallet like this you get theoretically all the goodies to those too I suppose, for a possibly short time (assuming the user wasn’t using 2FA that wasn’t email based as well).

Not to mitigate these issues. They need to fix them, just trying to ascertain how severe and if individual users should have much cause for concern.

Bitwarden is a zero-knowledge encryption password manager. This means that Bitwarden as a company cannot see your passwords. They remain encrypted end-to-end with your individual email and Master Password. Bitwarden never stores and cannot access your Master Password.

I did not, in fact, say. But they did say that, yes.

So, absolutely no difference in security compared to having a properly secured self-hosted VaultWarden instance. Gotcha.

At that point, why bother with the setup of samba shares and nextcloud or syncthing or whatever else and not use VaultWarden with its built in sync over WireGuard/TailScale?

If it’s critical, don’t self host it. It’s not worth it.

I know people will argue; I just need something that works and that I don’t have to worry about patching.

Works on iOS?

BW06: Icon URL Item Decryption. Items can include a
URL field, which is used to autofill the credentials and display
an icon on the client. The client decrypts the URL and fetches
the icon from the server, including in its request the domain
and top-level domain of the URL. For instance, if the URL is
“https://host.tld/path”, the client request includes “host.tld”.
This means that the adversary can learn (part of) the con-
tents of URL fields. Using Attack BW05, an adversary can
place the ciphertext of sensitive item fields, such as a user-
name or a password, in the encrypted URL field. After fetch-
ing the item, the client will then decrypt the ciphertext, confus-
ing it for a URL. If the plaintext satisfies some conditions (i.e.
containing a ‘.’ and no !), it will be leaked to the adversary.
A URL checksum feature was deployed in July 2024, mak-
ing the clients store a hash of the URL in another encrypted
item field, therefore providing a rudimentary integrity check
and preventing this attack. Note that old items are never up-
dated to add such a checksum: this feature only protects items
created after its introduction. Furthermore, URL checksums
are only checked if a per-item key is present for the item.
As we will see, an adversary can prevent per-item keys from
being enabled with Attack BW10.

IMPACT. The adversary can recover selected target ciphertexts
in the item, such as the username or the password.

REQUIREMENTS. The user opens a vault containing items
that do not use per-item keys (i.e., items created before July
2024, or after Attack BW10 is run). The target plaintext must
satisfy some additional conditions, detailed in Appendix

-- from the paper the article is discussing

So you could potentially expose your passwords to a compromised server or some kind of MITM. If they meet the conditions for the validation check, anyway.

Sadly this functionality is not included in KeepassXC, so I continue to use the original Keepass for this reason, but I agree, my setup is the same and I'm very happy with it.

Are you trying to say the front fell off?

Same. My password database never touches a server I don't own and my keyfile is manually copied between my devices and stored separately from the database file.

Keepass, upload the database file to random free cloud accounts after making changes to the database.

This is foulproof as long as the end-user device doesn't get hacked, right?

Edit: Did I say something wrong? Why downvotes? Database file are encrypted, even if someone gets it, its encrypted and they don't have your password.

So its basically safe to upload your database. If you think I'm wrong then explain why I can't use free cloud accounts to store an encrypted file?

There is Synctrain and Möbius Sync. They are not perfect due to iOS restrictions on apps running in the background, but they work well enough as long as I occasionally open them to make sure they sync.