The best and most secure password manager

[vela]

I think harborsparrow's point is that a commercial password manager is accessible over the internet to billions of people.

That's not universally true.

So even if its encryption is better than my "home-brew" scheme, many, many more people can work on cracking it.

This is only a real concern if you seriously believe that today's state-of-the-art industry-standard encryption methods are "easily" crackable or if you used a poor encryption key, in which case I wouldn't put much trust in any home-brew scheme you come up with.

I agree with harborsparrow. These commercial password managers are targets for hackers and have been successfully hacked in the past. I'll trust my notebook with hints above them any day.

There's tension between security and convenience, and history has shown that the vast majority of people will opt for convenience. For most people, (properly) using a password manager will result in a great increase in security with little or no overall cost in convenience.

Arstechnica had a series of articles awhile back about passwords and cracking methods, and it was quite eye-opening how sophisticated the methods are now. As much as you might think your system is unique and foolproof, people tend to follow patterns, and cracking attempts exploit these tendencies.

 

[harborsparrow]

It's not the encryption methods I worry about-- it's the fact that the password managers are themselves applications written by programmers like me, and hardly a day goes by when someone's allegedly secure application (in any field you choose) gets broken into, not because the encryption method was too easy, but because of software bugs. Use those products if you wish; it's one valid strategy.

The seat-of-the-pants cautious strategy I employ is another one. This is a matter so complicated in all its aspects that there cannot be a single definitive answer that is right for everyone.

Having written commercial software myself for decades, I can only say that my experience is, it is still far too difficult and complex to implement good security in any product. It's difficult to understand all the risks and ways hackers can invade software. A lot of products have tried forcing users to create more complex passwords, which IN MY OPINION has caused more people to start writing down their passwords. I once had to have a logon at a USGS website that forced me to pick a different, very complex password every 3 weeks. I calmly wrote those passwords down and taped them to my monitor at work, and the whole thing made me so frustrated that I actively hoped someone would break into that website.

Well, end of rant. Use these things all you want, and I wish you well with them.

 

[anorlunda]

I try to think of ordinary people. If they have dozens of accounts and change their passwords regularly, and never re-use, that means generating 10, 20, 50 or more new passwords per month. Not only remembering what they are, but which pw goes where, and which pws were used in the past is a challenge that few people can meet. Almost all of them will simplify somehow to what they can manage.

That's why I discount how marvelously secure a single pw scheme can be; I think instead of the average man's average performance. My conclusion is that the average man is much better off with a pw manager. Sure, smart young people can do better than that, but that's not relevant.

 

[Vanadium 50]

, please be aware that password managers are a TARGET with high value to hackers, and they have been compromised in the past

As the link says, "no encrypted user data (stored passwords) was stolen". This was a data breach just like Equifax, Target and Facebook had. That doesn't make it good, but we should discuss it on the basis of what actually happened.

As mentioned earlier, Lastpass (and presumably their competitors do things the same way) does not store and does not even know your passwords. What they store can be combined with your master password to create the passwords. If you like, they store half your password, and your master password is the other half. Stealing one half gets you nothing. (At first order; there are second-order effects)

The better target is wherever both parts exist together. One such place is your PC. Somewhere in memory your real password exists. If it's a laptop, and you've ever gone into hibernation, chances are the real password may still exist somewhere on disk as well. Laptop stolen? So were your passwords. Of course, an encrypted Excel file has the same problem, and an unencrypted Excel (or plain text) is even worse.

Another place is in your head. A malicious web page can spoof your password manager, and get you to enter your master password that way. That's probably the biggest flaw in the system, far riskier than the chances someone with a supercomputer will steal half the passwords and start working on figuring out the other halves. But since we're not going to take human beings out of the loop, we're stuck with it.

The question to ask is not "is this perfect?" or "are there risks?". It's "is this more secure than what I was doing?" and maybe even "who am I trying to protect against"? I think password managers are more secure than many alternatives, and are decent protection against opportunistic lowlifes and script kiddies. They are not protections against major world governments.

 

[anorlunda]

The better target is wherever both parts exist together.

Another place is in your head.

Both very true.

Another target is the web sites where your account and passwords (pw) are stored. They are subject to data breaches where they can be stolen in bulk. It is claimed that many tens of millions of account and pw are for sale on the dark net. Note that, once stolen, the difficulty of your pw becomes immaterial. A more difficult pw protects you only from the risk of guessing or brute force attacks. In today's world, it is much more productive for bad guys to attempt theft of sites like Marriott Hotels than to rely on brute force. (Although I presume that people who use something like "pw" or "admin" as their pw are still targets for guessing attacks.)

The best defense against the bulk theft risk is frequent changes in pw. If you change it every N days, then worse case, your security is compromised for N days. More likely, if it takes more than N days for the stolen pw to be exploited by the bad guys, you are at no risk at all because the stolen pw becomes moot before it is exploited. You can improve that when you read in the news that a site you use has been compromised, and you then change that pw immediately.

Password managers like Lastpass make it easier to change all your pw every N days. It can choose the new pw for you. For a few popular sites, Lastpass partially automates the pw change process for you.

Stolen credit card numbers are analogous. Three times in the past 3 years, my cc company informed me that a new cc was in the mail because they suspected that the old one had been compromised. Canceling the old cc number ASAP is the best defense. That's very inconvenient, but it is just common sense regarding security.

 

[fluidistic]

For those (Greg Berhardt and symbolipoint?) who use Chrome and Firefox to store their passwords, please bear in mind that they store them in plain text and that it's very easy to display them. Anyone having a direct access to your computer can see your passwords and it's likely possible for online crackers to get their hands on them too.

What about offline password managers with double security, i.e. password + secret file? I don't know if a keylogger could dupe someone to dump their secret file, that means it's probably a yes I guess.

The synchronization between devices can be made via usb (painful), automatic script that uses ssh or via email/dropbox. Even though the database file is on dropbox or similar websites (that were hacked in the past), as vanadium points out, they would get only half of the information to crack it up.

Picking the masterpassword can consist of several (greater or equal to 4) words, possibly mixing languages, adding weird signs at some specific spots. It is not hard to remember, and it's close to impossible to brute force.

I personally use keepassxc, which is based on keepassx, which I think (but I'm not sure nor do I care) is based on keepass.

 

[symbolipoint]

Thanks for the advice, fluidistic.
Nobody uses my laptop computers other than me. I use the password manager in a chrome-like browser alternative on an old computer of o.s. Windows VISTA; otherwise, I use LastPass. LastPass is still not properly handling some multiple-sign-in sites on all computers.

 

[harborsparrow]

I divide my logins into 3 tiers. Most are logins that, if compromised, hardly matter. Like where you are forced to create a login to download a photo. For those, I use a junk email account (my Yahoo email works well for this), and if needed regularly, I might let the browser store the password. Those passwords I do not make complicated. If hackers get those, it is because they hope I have reused the password, or part of it, on a higher value site.

For places where I have to use a credit card or enter more valuable information, I use strong passwords, unique passwords, and I don't let the browser store passwords. I use PayPal whenever possible and try o avoid giving my cred card to any sites other than Google or Amazon (bad enough I know, but they do have the resources to try hard on security).

The highest tier is sites where I am an admin, and my personal finances. On these I take every precaution I can think of, included always logging out, closing the browser, and not letting the browser keep cookies.

I do reuse the same password within that lower tier, but not in the higher two. I use different schemes of increasing complexity for them.

I cannot imagine being comfortable committing my higher tiers to a password vault because I know too much, have studied and read too much, to trust anyone else's software.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Rather than use any software that is vulnerable, it's best to use a diary to keep track of all your passwords. Keep the diary in a safe place, and nothing would be compromised unless a thief breaks into your house.

For sites where you tend to log-in frequently and are within the group "lower tier" as per @harborsparrow, you can save the passwords in your browser.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Today an article was published on safety of passwords with Chrome. Quoting the necessary parts (to preserve the text in case the link doesn't function later):

If you use Chrome as your primary browser, be sure to install Google’s Password Checkup extension because your credentials may have already found its way into the database of hackers due to the frequent breaches that have taken place in the recent past.

Google says that it has over 4 billion compromised usernames and passwords. Every time you log into your account on a website, the extension will alert you if your password is safe or not.

To get this extension, go to https://chrome.google.com/webstore. Search for Password Checkup. Be sure that the extension that shows up in the result is the one offered by Google. Click on the “Add to Chrome” button. A green icon will sit on your Chrome address bar on the top right. You will get automatic alerts if you use a compromised password.

You can check by going to a website that requires you to log in. Click on the Password Checkup icon and you should ideally get a message saying “None of your recently used passwords was detected in a data breach”.

Google takes extra care with sites where you use the Google username and password. In case an attacker hacks your Google account, Google does Cross Account Protection and makes sure that your privacy is protected in the process. Google will send a message that a security breach has happened and notify the app or website.

Yes, there are other sites to check up on your account such as https://haveibeenpwned.com/, but having the browser extension automatically doing it for you is a much better option.

Now, you may not trust a big monopoly like Google with all your passwords, but the company says it “never reveals this personal information”. Any data reported back to Google about the extension’s use is anonymous.

Firefox users should try Firefox Monitor that essentially does the same thing but is not an extension. Go to https://monitor.firefox.comand sign up for its alerts. You will be told when your online account has been leaked or a data breach has occurred in the websites you visit.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

None of your recently used passwords were detected in a data breach.

phew!

 

[anorlunda]

your credentials may have already found its way into the database of hackers due to the frequent breaches that have taken place in the recent past.

It emphasizes that the most important strategy for consumers is more frequent password changes as opposed to harder to guess passwords. A stolen password must be exploited within the time window until your next password change to do harm to you.

Frequent changes is where a password manager helps. If you have many passwords, and you change them often (i.e. 30 days), it is too onerous to track without the assistance of some software. If I did it manually, I would be harming myself because I would not remember my pw. My manager (lastpass) chooses the new passwords, and it automates the pw change process on a few popular sites.

Even if the security of the password manager itself is compromised in a one-time breach, the thief must make use of that info before you change your passwords again.

 

[symbolipoint]

If you have many passwords, and you change them often (i.e. 30 days), it is too onerous to track without the assistance of some software. If I did it manually, I would be harming myself because I would not remember my pw. My manager (lastpass) chooses the new passwords, and it automates the pw change process on a few popular sites.

The password manager can ruin some of your username-password combinations for sites at which you have more than one account, unless you know the special trick to make the save to new passwords happen properly.

 

[anorlunda]

The password manager can ruin some of your username-password combinations for sites at which you have more than one account, unless you know the special trick to make the save to new passwords happen properly.

Good point.

I just looked that up for lastpass. The help desk says that it works only if you disable the browser's password fill-in. In other words, don't use a pw manager and the browser's pw management at the same time.

 

[symbolipoint]

Good point.

I just looked that up for lastpass. The help desk says that it works only if you disable the browser's password fill-in. In other words, don't use a pw manager and the browser's pw management at the same time.

Although you might have found "correct" information, it is inadequate for the problem. LastPass mishandles saving on sites with multiple logins no-matter the settings adjustment made to the browser. Trying to setup the separate logins for a same site manually also fails. (Any further about this and probably better done through a computer-help forum than through physicsforums, but I'm interested anyhow).

 

[phyzguy]

This discussion is not increasing my confidence in password managers. I think I'll stick with my physical notebook.

 

[symbolipoint]

This discussion is not increasing my confidence in password managers. I think I'll stick with my physical notebook.

But for many users, they can be very convenient. Try more than one and see how well you can adapt and learn. Look to the product's help forum (IF ANY) for guidance just in case some real help is possible.

 

[phyzguy]

But for many users, they can be very convenient. Try more than one and see how well you can adapt and learn. Look to the product's help forum (IF ANY) for guidance just in case some real help is possible.

Convenience was never the issue. It's all about security. Using the same password '1234' for all sites is also very convenient.

 

[symbolipoint]

Convenience was never the issue. It's all about security. Using the same password '1234' for all sites is also very convenient.

But they both are - not just one - not just either or.

We need a password for SECURITY and we can write it in a note someplace where most people do not know where to look. We can do this for many usernames and passwords for site accounts.

We WANT a password manager program for CONVENIENCE to help us with SECURITY.

 

[sysprog]

The better target is wherever both parts exist together. One such place is your PC.

Only during password validation is the clear text password in your PC.

Somewhere in memory your real password exists.

Not after password validation is concluded.

If it's a laptop, and you've ever gone into hibernation, chances are the real password may still exist somewhere on disk as well.

The memory content gets compressed and temporarily saved to the disk during hibernation, but during your session, the memory doesn't have your clear text password anyway.

Laptop stolen? So were your passwords.

Not so, unless you manually saved them in clear text in a cheat sheet file. Only hashes are stored on the HDD by Windows, OSX, or Linux.

Of course, an encrypted Excel file has the same problem, and an unencrypted Excel (or plain text) is even worse.

Excel used weaker encryption comparatively late into the game, and has an escrow policy option that if exercised weakens the overall security, but does not anywhere store passwords in clear text.

For those (Greg Berhardt and symbolipoint?) who use Chrome and Firefox to store their passwords, please bear in mind that they store them in plain text and that it's very easy to display them.

It's easy for you to display your own passwords, but if you do a switch user to another account, you won't get the clear text passwords for the prior account.

Anyone having a direct access to your computer can see your passwords and it's likely possible for online crackers to get their hands on them too.

Only while you're logged in are the passwords available to you in clear text. They're encrypted using the Windows DPAPI (Data Protection API), which makes them no less (or more) secure than your Windows login. You can test these assertions by attempting a direct find of the clear text for a password on the HDD or in a memory dump.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Somewhere in memory your real password exists.

Not after password validation is concluded.

You sound certain.

Let's go with an oversimplified example. Your password is abcdef. The algorithm to generate the real password is to add together the piece on disk, aaaddd with the piece in the cloud, 012012. You are telling me that after the authentication neither 012012 nor abcdef exists anywhere in memory and you are 100% sure of this?

 

[fluidistic]

It's easy for you to display your own passwords, but if you do a switch user to another account, you won't get the clear text passwords for the prior account.

I do not think so. If you have the chance to be logged into another account, then you reboot and plug a thumbdrive with almost any Linux distribution on it. Then you have access to all files from the Windows (or even Linux) users, unless they have encrypted their hard disk.

 

[sysprog]

You sound certain.

Please trust me when I assure you that if I ever seem certain and later turn out to have been wrong, it won't have been the first time such a confluence of events has occurred.

Let's go with an oversimplified example. Your password is abcdef. The algorithm to generate the real password is to add together the piece on disk, aaaddd with the piece in the cloud, 012012. You are telling me that after the authentication neither 012012 nor abcdef exists anywhere in memory and you are 100% sure of this?

I can't say what the interaction between 'the cloud' and the client is. If your login password is abcdef, and its encrypted hash is aaaddd, it is not clear to me what 'piece in the cloud' is ever added with aaaddd. What is stored on the site for which you have a login password is its server's own hash of some other clear text password, say abcxyz. That clear text password is not stored on your machine when your browser remembers a password for you.

If your browser, e.g. Chrome, remembers abcxyz as your password at site1.net for you, it uses the DPAPI to generate an encrypted version of it that is dependent on your Windows login. When you return to the site to log in again, and Chrome remembers abcxyz for you, it doesn't pull it in from clear text on your machine. It retrieves it in the form in which it had previously encrypted it using a key that is dependent on your Windows login password, and decrypts it by again calling the DPAPI.

Here's a link to an article describing the DPAPI: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/pr...55(v=msdn.10)#windataprotection-dpapi_topic04

In my post, I used the words "clear text password" instead of your term "real password". Specifically, in response to your contention "Somewhere in memory your real password exists.", I responded, "Not after password validation is concluded."; i.e. the password that you just entered at the Windows login prompt is NOT stored for the life of the session, but is discarded at the completion of validation.

Subsequently, during the Windows session, when Chrome offers to remember a password for a site, having intercepted the clear text password, if authorized by the user to save the password, uses the hash of your Windows password to generate a key by which to encrypt, to a new hash, your password for the site, and stores that hash in its own local database on your PC, NOT on its servers.

If you disconnect your machine from the net, you can still clear saved passwords from Chrome. (I'm not referring here to authorizations to use your Google account credentials.), because the encrypted passwords are stored locally. All that has happened is that Chrome has encrypted a site password using indirectly a locally stored hash of your Windows login password, and has stored the hashed result locally on your machine. That password is not compromised if the integrity of your Windows login password is intact.

If you log off and power off your machine, a subsequent possessor who does not have your login password will find it encrypted, and will find any site passwords saved on the machine by Chrome to be also encrypted. All the data that is encrypted via the Windows DPAPI, or (on non-Windows machines) via the OSX or Linux keychain mechanism, is dependent on your login password.

That leads to the question, how difficult would it be to find your hashed login password by reading the HDD, and then transform it the same way the DPAPI would, and then use it to decrypt everything that was encrypted using DPAPI, i.e. all your site passwords?

The DPAPI article linked above says:

Because DPAPI requires a password to provide protection, the logical step is for DPAPI to use a user's logon password, which it does, in a way. DPAPI actually uses the user's logon credential. In a typical system, in which the user logs on with a password, the logon credential is simply a hash of the user's password.
​

From your post:

Laptop stolen? So were your passwords.​

and from my response:

Only hashes are stored on the HDD.​

If the login password hash can be recovered and used to decrypt the other hashes, then storing the hashes for the browser-saved site passwords instead of saving them in clear text offers only a veil of obfuscation against someone in physical possession of the device, rather than the strength of the encryption algorithm by which the hashes are generated -- no encryption algorithm can offer secrecy greater than the secrecy of its key.

So, on review, I can't say that I'm sure that someone who steals your PC can't use reasonably straightforward forensic techniques to recover all your site passwords that your browser remembers.

 

[sysprog]

The page at:

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/dpapi_data_decryptor.html​

describes a freeware DPAPI decryptor tool, and gives the following download link for it:

https://www.nirsoft.net/toolsdownload/dataprotectiondecryptor-x64.zip​

Another NirSoft page at

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/chromepass.html​

describes a Chrome-specfic password recovery tool with the download link as follows:

https://www.nirsoft.net/toolsdownload/chromepass.zip​

I will on a test machine see whether I can use these and other tools to decrypt Chrome browser-saved passwords using only found hashes. I'm skeptical, because, as far as I can tell right now, the commercial password recovery products don't say they can do that. They tout their ability to get your other passwords given your Windows login password in clear text, and the ability to reset your Windows login password, but I don't see any of them claiming to be able to recover your Windows-login-password-dependent other passwords without your clear-text Windows login password.

 

[elusiveshame]

You sound certain.

Let's go with an oversimplified example. Your password is abcdef. The algorithm to generate the real password is to add together the piece on disk, aaaddd with the piece in the cloud, 012012. You are telling me that after the authentication neither 012012 nor abcdef exists anywhere in memory and you are 100% sure of this?

DB queries are held in memory until it's no longer needed, Windows passwords are hashed in memory until a reboot, and if you use cookies - your hash, or some authentication, is in memory (of some form). Remember - you have to authenticate every page load to ensure you have the proper access. Can't do that if something isn't in memory stating you have permission.

 

[sysprog]

DB queries are held in memory until it's no longer needed, Windows passwords are hashed in memory until a reboot, and if you use cookies - your hash, or some authentication, is in memory (of some form). Remember - you have to authenticate every page load to ensure you have the proper access. Can't do that if something isn't in memory stating you have permission.

The reason for the question raised by @Vanadium 50 had more to do with whether the DPAPI is adequately protective against someone who is in possession of the machine. The later part of the discussion was regarding whether the hash of the Windows login password could be retrieved from a physical search of the HDD, and used to produce passwords secured by the DPAPI. There is an opacity component of the DPAPI that is intended to make that difficult. For my part, just how possible or difficult that might be remains to be seen.

 

[rcgldr]

How secure is the encryption used for password protected zip files? If it's good enough, you could zip a text file with some random text patterns embedded along with the actual password info.

 

[sysprog]

7-zip is open source, and can use AES-256, which is strong.

 

[harborsparrow]

Sorry to find this
https://blog.lastpass.com/2022/08/notice-of-recent-security-incident/

 

[vela]

It's apparently part of a widespread set of breaches.

https://arstechnica.com/information...s-caught-up-in-the-twilio-hack-keeps-growing/

 

[Vanadium 50]

I don't consider the LastPass breach as terribly dangerous. Did they get any master passwords? No. (And they can't, since LastPass doesn't know them. This has other issues, but this isn't one) Did they get any credit cards? No. Did they get any client PII? Again, no. Might they have gotten some code? Yes. The idea behind public-key encryption is not to rely on "security by obscurity" so in principle the code is unhelpful. In practice, it's hard to say.

They got access somehow to a development system, presumably through carelessness, malice or greed on the part of an employee. Thing is, I don't think this is something that can easily be protected against. Does Company X have better employees than Company Y? How would you even tell.

The Authy breach looks more troublesome.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

For work we use https://1password.com/ so that must be decent.

 

[harborsparrow]

I don't consider the LastPass breach as terribly dangerous...

My understanding is, they copied a portion of the source code. That would certainly be enough to cause me to stop using the product at this time, in an abundance of caution.

 

[FactChecker]

My understanding is, they copied a portion of the source code. That would certainly be enough to cause me to stop using the product at this time, in an abundance of caution.

I don't think I would worry too much about that. Some of these systems are open source and it is not a problem. Just don't download a new version from an unsafe source.

 

[harborsparrow]

I don't think I would worry too much about that. Some of these systems are open source and it is not a problem. Just don't download a new version from an unsafe source.

The accounts I have read all emphasize that some of the IP (intellectual property) of the company was also stolen, and researchers have specifically warned that they expect information from the breach will be used to further probe the company's defenses. I take that seriously. It clearly wasn't just the open source portions of the code that were taken. https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/lastpass-data-breach-source-code-stolen