8 ms·
MitM Attack against KeePass 2’s Update Check
- jbob2000 10y agoIt's free software; You have no right to complain or dictate priorities when you aren't paying for it. You aren't the customer, KeePass 2 advertisers are. Use 1password and pay $5 a month if you want the right to complain.
- pfg 10y agoProjects should not be exempt from criticism just because they're free. That's a terrible attitude. The article does not attempt to dictate anything, I would not even call it a complaint. It merely points out unsafe practices and recommends a solution, in a very objective tone.
- mikeash 10y agoThat's a justifiable sentiment when people are complaining about missing features or mundane bugs, but security vulnerabilities are a whole different matter. That's causing harm, not just failing to provide value. You're still allowed to complain about a mugging you didn't pay for, after all.
- prohor 10y agoHow about those who donate? Aren't they kind of customers? And what would you say if Linux updates could be easily changed with MitM?
- detaro 10y agoEven if you believe there is no right to complain, you have the right to warn others about issues you see. Contacting the maintainer beforehand and suggesting a fix to them is common courtesy if you do that.
- rcthompson 10y agoGiving something away for free is not an excuse for it to provide negative value by exposing its users to MitM attacks.
- paulryanrogers 10y agoNegative value is a subjective judgement. Updates themselves are signed packages. While it's not ideal, careful users do gain value in an open, free, and mature solution. Full disclosure: I sell a plugin for KeePass 2.
- rcthompson 10y agoI'm not necessarily saying that Keepass2 provides a negative value overall. As you say, that's a subjective judgement. However, the unnecessary MitM exposure is certainly a negative value.
- Ensorceled 10y agoWhat "complaint" are you talking about? The blog is an objective explanation of a CVE along with explicit suggestions to the author and an discussion on how to protect yourself if you're a user.
- cyphar 10y ago> It's free software; It is not free software, it's proprietary. Please don't use the phrase "free software" in this context, as it confuses people. It has a very specific meaning in the context of software.
- mhurron 10y agoEven in the context of software, it still means no cost. In the context of software it can also mean FOSS, but just because we're talking about software doesn't mean we suddenly lose the 'no cost' meaning.
- EpicEng 10y ago'Free' has exactly two specific meanings on the context of software. Sorry to burst your bubble. The version you are referring to is irrelevant in the minds of the vast majority of people who use software.
- 0x4a42 10y agoOn the homepage it says: "KeePass is really free, and more than that: it is open source (OSI certified). You can have a look at its full source and check whether the encryption algorithms are implemented correctly.". Why do you say it's proprietary?
- cyphar 10y agoAh sorry, I was wrong. I thought that KeePass was proprietary and that KeePassX was a free software replacement. :P
- SignalsFromBob 10y agoKeePass is GPL2 licensed.
- EpicEng 10y ago>You aren't the customer, KeePass 2 advertisers are. Well certainly those advertisers will leave along with the user base. This sort of silly attitude is what keeps a lot of people from using free software to begin with.
- jey 10y agoThe indirect costs of switching to HTTPS (like lost advertisement revenue) make it a inviable solution. How does HTTPS result in lost ad revenue?
- erk__ 10y agoHackernews thread from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803716
- prohor 10y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803716
- revelation 10y agoThe answers here are off the mark. You can obviously have the update channel use HTTPS and keep your website at HTTP (not recommended, but certainly possible). Or just sign the updates and version information.
- pfg 10y agoThe way the update system works (according to the article) is that it shows a pop-up with the new version, and that pop-up opens their site (via HTTP). It is conceivable that they'd rely on the impressions coming from update dialogs for their ad revenue, so the argument they used (which - just to clarify - is not my argument) would apply here as well. Switching to HTTPS (or some other signing mechanism) for the update check would solve one of the problems described in the article (tricking the user into thinking there's a new version available), but it would not eliminate the MitM opportunity on the site itself.
- stcredzero 10y agoThe MitM on the automated update check is by far more dangerous.
- SignalsFromBob 10y ago
- jc4p 10y agoThat's wild, I didn't expect any security-centric website in 2016 to be HTTP-only! The reasoning for not doing it is weird too, they could at the very least move the update logic over to a separate SSL endpoint. Anyway, I'm not quite sure on the differences between them but I've been using KeePassX for years and recommend it thoroughly (as long as you're not looking for a easily synced or multi-user product): https://www.keepassx.org/ https://www.keepassx.org/
- MrRadar 10y ago> That's wild, I didn't expect any security-centric website in 2016 to be HTTP-only! Both of the websites for PuTTY (www.putty.org and www.chiark.greenend.org.uk) are also non-encrypted. At least the downloads are hosted on a third server (the.earth.li) which does use HTTPS and 2048-bit GPG signatures are provided.
- fanf2 10y agoputty.org is not owned by the PuTTY developers; after some arguments the two parties came to an agreement about the use of the domain name, but you should not trust putty.org.
- AgentConundrum 10y agoThanks for the recommendation. I just switched.
- SkyMarshal 10y ago/second keepassx, been using it for years too. Portable encrypted database file and cross-platform = excellent.
- nwah1 10y agoI was always skeptical of KeePass which is why I've been using KeePassX. It is just a simple Qt app. Unfortunately there is no KeePassHttp support yet, so you can't hook it up to your browser, but there is a fork available with full support. https://github.com/droidmonkey/keepassx_http/ https://github.com/droidmonkey/keepassx_http/
- alyandon 10y agoI'd probably switch to KeePassX instead of running KeePass in wine if the password generator were as flexible.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- the_af 10y agoWhy are you running KeePass in wine?
- Zuider 10y agoThat could make sense OP dual-booted and the KeePass app and database were installed on the NTFS partition.
- zokier 10y agoHow exactly is that supposed to make sense?
- Zuider 10y agoThe advantage is that you get to keep your passwords on a single database rather than having a separate copy of the database for each operating system. Synchronizing two separate copies of the database would be painful. An alternate solution is to keep a single password database on a FAT32 formatted partition or thumbdrive which is readable from both Operating systems.
- crypt1d 10y ago"Received response from Dominik Reichl: The vulnerability will not be fixed. The indirect costs of switching to HTTPS (like lost advertisement revenue) make it a inviable solution." Well the indirect costs of not fixing it just got a lot bigger. Now a lot of people will realize that their passwords are not as safe as KeePass claims they are and will switch to a different product. So this way they loose both their money and their users' trust. Not a very good business decision.
- Animats 10y agoRight. This is a security product. Any security product that makes things worse (and there are all too many of them) has no right to exist.
- deftnerd 10y agoThat response is crazy. If he's so set at keeping the homepage http, then make a download.keypass.com site and keep the downloads on there, with https required.
- 3pt14159 10y agoEh. Still vulnerable to HSTS attack. To me HTTPS without HSTS is only protection to programmers. To the public, HTTPS without HSTS protection is essentially useless against MITM attacks.
- draw_down 10y agoMaybe, maybe not. People might not notice or care. (Of course I agree that this is a poor decision security-wise.)
- EpicEng 10y agoSure, but it seems as though the type of person who would use KeePass in the first place is the sort who would care.
- artursapek 10y agoWhy would switching to HTTPS cost him any advertising revenue?
- puddintane 10y agoRoboform has been my go to, but honestly I don't know how well the security is on it but by the track record it looks as though they have not had any issues by what short searching I have done. I've seen several open source systems that share on GitHub such as PadLock but have yet to be able to test these to compare to Roboform. Considering how cheap I was able to pick up Roboform to (as a college student I got 4 years for 1) I really haven't seen the urge to switch considering on how universal Siber System's Roboform does on multiple systems. Even though this can also be a downfall if the developer's slack on one system, I have been satisfied with these guys since I started using them so many years ago and really haven't found many complaints. edit My entire reasoning for posting was that while I'm very familiar with Roboform my experience with KeePass was always lacking compared to others.
- jackson_1 10y agoThe indirect costs of switching to HTTPS (like lost advertisement revenue) make it a inviable solution This doesn't entirely make sense. I'm sure it's possible to serve adverts on a HTTPS page, and let's encrypt is hardly expensive
- eightysix_four 10y ago> I'm sure it's possible to serve adverts on a HTTPS page Yes, you can, but you lose a tremendous amount of ad revenue and a number of ad providers still don't support HTTPS.
- AjithAntony 10y agoIs this becuase all the third party assets and scripts would need to be HTTPS as well? If they weren't then you get that browser warning about mixed content?
- cortesoft 10y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803716 Too many ad buyers don't have https support, so the number of bidders for the ad space is lower, meaning a lower price per ad.
- Orangeair 10y agoWhy is there advertisement on the automated update server? Why can't he just split them apart? What with things like Let's Encrypt nowadays, there really shouldn't be any excuse not to use https. Especially for a security related product!
- SignalsFromBob 10y agoThere isn't an automated update server. KeePass can't auto-update. The web server has a text file on it that contains the version number of the latest release. KeePass (optionally) checks that file to see if a new version is available and displays a notification to the user. Downloads and installation of new versions has to be done manually by the user. The binaries are hosted on SourceForge and other mirror sites, and in my cursory checking those are serving the file over HTTPS. The binaries are digitally signed. So any possible attack against KeePass would as most cause the notification dialog to appear saying there's a new version. anyway, the author found a solution by signing the text file that the update checker looks at. IMO, that's a superior solution to HTTPS. He's posted a statement on the KeePass website. http://keepass.info/help/kb/sec_issues.html#updsig http://keepass.info/help/kb/sec_issues.html#updsig
- extropic-engine 10y agoI've already been slowly migrating from KeePass to https://www.passwordstore.org/ https://www.passwordstore.org/ and this is just one more reason why.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dmoy 10y agoWell I'm glad I switched off of keepass awhile back. Anyone know any good password managers that have web login and support U2F? Lastpass does not :(
- teilo 10y agoCouldn't this be solved by signing the update file? But the excuse of the dev is bogus in any case. In is trivial to have that single file transferred via HTTPS. His ad revenue excuse makes me thing something fishy is going on here.
- bqe 10y agoThat would help, but an attacker being able to deliver an arbitrary website by MITM is still something that should be avoided.
- stcredzero 10y agoSigning the update file and having a separate page for the SHA256 hash of the binary would win back a lot of my confidence at this point.
- 21 10y agoMany years ago I reported two bugs in KeePass, one related to the tray icon, and the other related to some bad rendering in the GUI. Both were closed, with reasons like "this is a bug in .NET", "this is a bug in Windows". Maybe they were, but somehow other applications didn't expose them. The bugs were annoying, and if it were my software I would have fixed them somehow, even if they were not my fault. Long story short, the author gave me a bad impression, the kind of "know it all, know it best" attitude. So his refusal to fix this MITM problem doesn't surprise me one bit.
- pcunite 10y agoDisable the update via: https://sourceforge.net/p/keepass/discussion/329220/thread/a7ea7b6c/ https://sourceforge.net/p/keepass/discussion/329220/thread/a...
- breakingcups 10y agoSee a more detailed (but still very wrong in my opinion) response from Dominik here: https://sourceforge.net/p/keepass/discussion/329220/thread/e430cc12/#f398 https://sourceforge.net/p/keepass/discussion/329220/thread/e...