The beauty of open source

Does anyone still talk about Keeper password manager? I feel like I used to hear about that one a lot, and now it has just disappeared off of the face of the earth.

I store my keypass database on several flash drives in different physical locations and update them several times per year to make sure that even if I do lose the copy I have, the versions on the flash drives, not at my physical location, are decently up to date, and so if I do lose any of the password data, it will be only for a couple of months worth if that.

If I add things that are extremely important, such as a new mortgage provider, or some sort of financial data into my keypass database, then I do an unscheduled immediate update to all of my flash drives in different physical locations to make sure that they all have that, but if it's just a social media account, and I was to lose access to it, and not have the password for it, then... I wouldn't be too upset about it.

In the absolute worst possible case, I stand to lose 3 months worth of data. It's not often that I have to tweak stuff in my password manager, so that would be very few changes.

Everyone using online password manager services deserves everything he gets

Use a offline password manager. Problem solved.

I assume you follow proper backup protocol it you are using offline password management.

How do you sync though? You keep one copy on your phone or something, I imagine? What apps and managers are you using?

Although syncthing is awesome, i use rclone to fetch the latest version of the password database. With syncthing, i would worry about collisions. Maybe would be better to sync it between two devices, Android and Linux.

Don't re-use passwords. Do use 2FA.

KeepassXC is the goat :)

The database file is encrypted so its fine to sync it however you like. I use syncthing for it which is p2p. Obviously set a very good password on it if you sync it through unsecure channels.

I had a look at this, and the only thing that intrigued be about KeePass was the ChaCha20 encryption which seems modern and nice.

I usually use rbw which doesn't use a web page to interact with BitWarden. It stores a local copy of the database, so the only time it contacts the servers is when adding new info or syncing or otherwise changing stuff.

I'll look more into KeePassXC and KeePassDX for mobile. Might be interesting, but the annoying part would be the syncing. You'd have to pay close attention to where you add new entries, and not add entries on separate devices if you want them synced to all devices. Or does that work somehow with KeePassXC?

Yes, let's blame the victim and not the data hording mega corps that advertise their crap to collect more data, make big promises, hide the better options, and actively undermine open source in every way they can.

I'm pretty sure the average person hears "open source" and think "oh that's insecure software made by hackers, I need to only use software from trusted sources". Using only trusted software is still a good idea, but unfortunately the trusted sources of 2002 have betrayed us.

Just set it up so that the resulting .kdbx database file is always instantly synced between your devices whenever you make changes. Everything is in that file and all keepass versions can open it. I use syncthing for this because it doesnt require a server, but you can use nextcloud or whatever you have available. With syncthing it always just keeps the most recently modified version.

If the password manager server is hacked and compromised, then syncing your passwords with the compromised server will lead to compromised passwords (duh)

What do you mean "duh"? The password managers claim that the exact opposite is true.

Most service providers therefore promote their products with the promise of “zero-knowledge encryption”. This means they assure users that their stored passwords are encrypted and even the providers themselves have “zero knowledge” of them and no access to what has been stored. “The promise is that even if someone is able to access the server, this does not pose a security risk to customers because the data is encrypted and therefore unreadable. We have now shown that this is not the case”, explains Matilda Backendal.

This would be true for a properly implemented end-to-end encryption scheme.

Many will argue that they need the convenience of an online password manager not knowing that what you stated is the safest form

I use one of the password managers mentioned in the article, purely for the convenience of apps on all my devices, syncing and complex individual passwords. Should I be looking to move to self hosting something instead? Would my host (likely a synology Nas or raspberry pi) not then have the same risks?

Solves the security issue. Destroys the accessibility part

I don't really understand how you would set that up on a mobile device but I probably won't use KeePassXC since it doesn't seem to have good credit card entry support.

If the password manager server is hacked and compromised, then syncing your passwords with the compromised server will lead to compromised passwords (duh)

No, not "duh". The right way to do this is client-side encryption/decryption. The server then does not at any moment know anything about your passwords.

I believe Proton Pass does not have the design flaws shown in the article. For instance, if you lose your password, you lose your data. Your data is encrypted and decrypted on your device.

With pretty much every major company being hacked at some point, credit card companies being hacked, everyone selling our details and data, doge and palantir. Feels like post it notes under the keyboard isn’t that bad of an idea.

This comment shows that you know less about computers, than you may think.
You can definetly make end to end encryption work using a Website. JavaScript runs client side. So as long as you trust the encryption algorithm (which in elements case you definetly can, because it is OSS), the encryption is safe and your unencrypted data never leaves the device.

wahtever i use keepass

I use an offline password manager, and sync an encrypted database with nextcloud. It's convenient enough, and secure enough for me. Easy to sync between my phone, desktop, and laptop. And I only need to remember two passwords, the nextcloud one, and the manager one. I don't think you can have it more secure and convenient all the same, at least not with current tech.

Yes of course you CAN make it safe in theory, but unless you run the web interface locally or on your own server, you cant be certain that the javascript delivered to you from the hoster hasnt been modified. Its like having autoupdates on but you have zero control over when or how the updates take place, because every time you open the page it could be different code from the last time.

So as long as you trust the encryption algorithm (which in elements case you definetly can, because it is OSS)

How do you know that the code on elements github repo is actually the same code that you get delivered from your homeserver that is hosting the web client? Your homeserver can just modify the web clients code however it wants and deliver a backdoored or faulty version to you. Which means you dont just have to trust the open source code, but also the admin who is managing the homeserver and also the hosting provider.

Is this really so hard to understand? Literally the entire client is delivered on demand from a remote server, obviously that is insecure if you dont control that server.

That's why mine is a physical book.

The point is you are trusting the JavaScript that the server delivered to you. If the server is compromised, it hands you compromised JavaScript and you're screwed. It's the exact same thing as going to evil.com and entering your master password. I think that you inherently understand that evil.com is untrusted. However, if passwordmanager.com is compromised by the same people who own evil.com. there's really no difference.

“We want our work to help bring about change in this industry,” says Paterson. “The providers of password managers should not make false promises to their customers about security but instead communicate more clearly and precisely what security guarantees their solutions actually offer.”

Great.
Now which password vault was the most cooperative and clear in their security communication and which one wasnt?
The author said that they have given the providers time to fix the issues. Now highlight the ones that did it the best.... >_>

This is what all the listed password manager claim.

What was done here was tricking the client through the server to do things. So the fixes went into the client application.

Security through layers. The flaws found here are about compromised server, so hosting your own server is a good first step. Next step is making the server only accessible via your own VPN. And of course hardening the server.

Or you can change the encryption to argon2 in the settings with salted hashes.
Granted it's probably not per item but at least something.

I understand, but wouldn't the same problem occur, if the server for the website you download your software from or the server for your package manager would be compromised? Even if you would buy your software physically on a CD, there would be a chance someone has messed with the content on a CD.

So I don't really see this as a flaw unique to browsers. Am I wrong?

Great.
I am now your spouse and you want to give me access to the flash drive. What now?

New requirement: I have several passwords I want to give you access to as well. What now?

As with everything: Your solution may work for yourself and a few others. The majority don't want to collect 5 flash drives in different locations every 3 months to update a file (and making sure it's the correct vault they have copied)

What I am wondering myself: Do the different amount of attacks mean the attack surface was greater or had more vulnerabilities or what made them only do 6 on Dashlane vs 12 on Bitwarden?

Edit:
In another article it was total identified vulnerabilities.

I self host via vault warden. And I have it locked behind tailscale vpn. Aside from your server itself getting hacked, which is a risk, this is more secure than having passwords on the public internet.

They did gove some advice. They said to go with a vendor that is transparent about problems and reveals the results of their third party security audits. I’m sure if you read between the lines it means they likely reviewed several vendors and chose to spend their time attacking ones that are opaque about their security stance and used outdated encryption or bad implementations of E2E encryption. So all three are likely suspect. Like if 1Password were developed similarly to LastPass wouldn’t they have spent time attacking it?

Edit: https://support.1password.com/security-assessments/

1Password are posting the results of their external pen testing now.

Bitwarden did so too.

But IMO your assumption is a bit of interpreting bad/malicious faith into it.
I see it more like they are the more publicly known brands/services that do this and underwent the audit.
I have read the TLDR by the authors (linked a few times in the comments) and the answer by bitwarden.
Bitwarden said the, fixed the issue, are in the progress of doing it or are accepting it as "this is intended/a trade-off".
What is a bit sad is that they had more vulnerabilities than other vendors. But I trust them more as they are mostly OSS.

I'm slowly moving over to my own manager, I'm still struggling to get it to all work properly on all my devices though.

I just sync it using my Nextcloud instance. No issues.

I host a pi hole via diet pi already, vault warden is packaged for diet pi already, project for the weekend!

Love the raspis, just make sure the passwords are not stored on the sd card because those fail all the time hah.

Good shout! Easy to mount a folder from my Nas on it though

Post its have their problems but at least they can’t be read half a globe away

PThe master copy stays on my device. If I need to give somebody access to a specific password, I just give them that password locally and they put it in their password manager for that account.

Same thing occurs if they need to give me a password. They give me the password. I put it in my password manager and then I'm the one who updates the flash drives on the rotating basis like I mentioned above.

If someone breaks into my house to read them I have big problems already.

Don't store your stuff in the cloud unless you don't mind someone else accessing it.

If you store things in the cloud that you don't want other people to access, you better be encrypting it yourself and only opening it locally.

This has been a cardinal rule since day 1.

Bitwarden with a vaultwarden docker container on my home server. Access over a VPS.

i really wasnt expecting a password manager related tech fearmongering on lemmy today

You have no idea how many times I’ve made that exact statement.

Great.
Now your data is (potentially) exactly where you are trying to keep it out of.

So you made it more cumbersome to yourself by keeping your data as local as possible, yet still chosing to give up the tiny sliver of additional security for the comfort of others.

I don't want to be annoying. But I hope you see what I am trying to convey.

How would I know if my own server isn't compromised? Any of the online password managers have a hell of better chance spotting intrusion than I do.