Password managers less secure than promised
ethz.ch
Researchers from ETH Zurich have discovered serious security vulnerabilities in three popular, cloud-based password managers. During testing, they were able to view and even make changes to stored passwords.
  • Millions of people use password managers. They make accessing online services and bank accounts easy and simplify credit card payments.
  • Many providers promise absolute security – the data is said to be so encrypted that even the providers themselves cannot access it.
  • However, researchers from ETH Zurich have shown that it is possible for hackers to view and even change passwords.
  • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    From the paper itself:

    We had a video-conference and numerous email exchanges with Bitwarden. At the time of writing, they are well advanced in deploying mitigations for our attacks: BW01, BW03, BW11, BW12 were addressed, the minimum KDF iteration count for BW07 is now 5000, and their roadmap includes completely removing CBC-only encryption, enforcing per-item keys and changing the vault format for integrity. On 22.12.25 they shared with us a draft for a signed organisation membership scheme, which would resolve BW08 and BW09. At our request, to maintain anonymity, they have not yet credited us publicly for the disclosure, but plan to do so.

    I didn’t look at the response to other Password managers, but the gist here is that the article is overblowing the paper by quite a bit and the majority of the “issues” discovered are either already fixed, or active design decisions.

    • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      I was also just looking for bitwarden information. Its just the best password manager and has never failed to do its job.

      I dont know what they mean with less secure than promised. I didnt expect them to be perfect, and havent read that they promise no security flaws.

      • ftbd@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        They advertise that passwords are only stored on the server in encrypted form, meaning they couldn’t read them even if they wanted to (or were forced to by a government agency) and you don’t have to trust them not to. This paper shows that several vulnerabilities exist in the protocol which could be exploited by malicious code running on the server (injected by hackers or a government agency), which would then allow an attacker to obtain cleartext-passwords. So you do, in fact, have to trust the servers integrity.

  • felbane@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    tl;dr:

    1. If the password manager server is hacked and compromised, then syncing your passwords with the compromised server will lead to compromised passwords (duh)
    2. None of the providers tested have (or have had in the past) compromised servers.

    and an observation or two:

    • Vaultwarden is free, self-hostable, and doesn’t rely on trust in a third party.
    • Keepass (and its client variants, like KeepassXC which is pretty great) is even more secure because there is no server, just an encrypted file you can store anywhere.
    • HereIAm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      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.

    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      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.