5 ms·

Can you suggest a good password manager? Ideally, I'd really like something that's deterministic - ie, I can provide a seed, and then that seed plus the domain

by jMyles 9y ago

Can you suggest a good password manager? Ideally, I'd really like something that's deterministic - ie, I can provide a seed, and then that seed plus the domain name becomes the basis for the password. That way, it's trivial to recover passwords when sitting at a new computer. And I imagine if the seed is sufficiently long (say, a 10-word sentence that includes 2 or 3 non-dictionary words) then it'd be highly impractical to force. Right?

vlunkr 9y ago
Someone please build this if it doesn't exist already!
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  IIRC Someone has before, either here or reddit but it was terribly implemented. Use LastPass, 1Password, or KeePass.
zootboy 9y ago
Except this all but negates the benefits of a password manager. Now if someone steals your master password, they can generate every single password you use. Use something like Keepass / KeepassXC. Yes, it's somewhat less convenient, but remember that security and convenience are always a trade-off.
- jMyles 9y ago
  > Except this all but negates the benefits of a password manager. It preserves the main benefit: that I no longer need to remember a separate password for each domain in order to stop sharing passwords across them. > Now if someone steals your master password, they can generate every single password you use. So it's just a matter of keeping the seed in the user's head and nowhere else. Right? That doesn't seem to be any more serious a security challenge than keeping secure an encrypted datastore full of passwords.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - shkkmo 9y ago
    > So it's just a matter of keeping the seed in the user's head and nowhere else. Right? Until you enter it on a compromised system to generate a password...
mulmen 9y ago
If it's deterministic then anyone who gets your seed has all your passwords.
- jMyles 9y ago
  But it's the same in any case, right? It's always, "if an attacker gets your <x>, they have all of your passwords." The question is: are they any more likely to gain a seed that I keep only in my head vs. a list of passwords in an encrypted datastore?
  - gervase 9y ago
    Except you won't keep it only in your head: you'll be typing it into a computer at some point. Really, in either case, you should also be using token-based 2FA as well.
    - jMyles 9y ago
      OK, so a surreptitious keylogger still defeats this config. I'm OK with that. My entire life presumes trust from my keyboard to my computer. I mean, if that were my main concerns, I'd have to rethink most of the bedrock security precautions I take, like passphrases for private SSH keys, etc. At the end of the day: I understand the risks and view them as absolutely acceptable in order to gain reasonable portability in a password manager.
  - mulmen 9y ago
    In the case of a password manager they would need the database and the master password. In the deterministic case they only need the seed.
  - domador 9y ago
    They're still different, the two schemes. In the case of a traditional password manager, an attacker would need to get your master password and the password datastore. In the case of datastores stored locally, rather than online, that's still two separate steps. In the case of your idea, once an attacker knows the seed, they have everything. Furthermore, if there's some weakness in the algorithm you use to generate passwords from the seed, then some site which has one of your deterministically-generated passwords could potentially breach the weak algorithm to reverse the process and obtain your seed, along with all your other passwords. Lastly, with a traditional password manager, you can change the master password at any time. Would you be able to change your seed when needed, or would you need to regenerate your passwords for EVERY site, if you need change the seed because it's been compromised?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gevz 9y ago
It seems that you might not need a good password manager for this type of scenario. Password manager for me is the one that stores unique passwords for each login. I don't know the majority of my passowrds
loeg 9y ago
The problem with the seed-only approach is you have to remember the password policy of every website, at the time you registered, in order to regenerate the password used.
TheRealWatson 9y ago
What if you need to update the password of one of the sites (e. g. this disqus breach) ? What if the domain name changes?
- jMyles 9y ago
  Maybe the program can take an integer nonce in addition. Then you have to track how many times you've used it for a particular domain. And if the domain name changes: you just keep generating for the old domain and tell the program to override. These seem like relatively simple challenges.
comex 9y ago
A better argument against deterministic password generators than the current replies to your post is that if you have to change your password on a given site - due to password expiration, ‘forgot password’, security breaches, etc. - you have to change the seed, and remember which seed you’re using for which site. There are some others: https://tonyarcieri.com/4-fatal-flaws-in-deterministic-password-managers https://tonyarcieri.com/4-fatal-flaws-in-deterministic-passw... But if you want to use one anyway, that blog post links to a bunch of them.
- jMyles 9y ago
  Ahh, thank you. This is the kind of refutation I need. I'll read up and decide. As for your specific qualm: I have to imagine that this can be solved by adding a numerically-determined nonce (so that I can say, "this is my 2nd password on disqus", etc) without having to fashion a new key. edit: OK, so I have read the article. Here are my reactions to the author's four concerns: * #1: Password schemes > Unfortunately, sites have wildly varying and often conflicting password requirements: non-alphanumeric symbols are mandatory! Passwords must be alphanumeric only! Capital letters required! Passwords must be lower-case only! Passwords must be at least 12 characters long! Passwords must be at most 8 characters long! > While many of these requirements seem silly and in a perfect world all sites would adopt the new NIST password guidelines, reality is messy and there is no single deterministic password generation scheme which can accommodate the password policies of all sites. There aren't that many different schemes. Maybe a grand total of three dozen? I think that the program can simply have a user-updated registry (perhaps that's shared) of schemes, and the generator accounts for this. This seems like... maybe 150 lines of Python. #2) Revocation and new passwords > We could ask the user to remember the site-by-site counter and input the correct counter value to derive the correct password. But I think this is silly. Umm, that's a strange argument. I don't think that's silly. I think it's highly practical. Currently, users remember a shitload of different details for different domains, including different usernames (this one was taken here, that one didn't meet the scheme there, etc) and often slightly different passwords. Making them remember an integer that will rarely be larger than 3 instead of a password seems awesome. Worse case scenario, they can keep trying until they get the right one. > You can’t store credit card numbers or bank account numbers in such a vault. > You can’t put arbitrary cryptographic keys in such a vault. > You can’t store randomly selected answers to security questions in such a vault. > I consider this to be part of the basic functionality of a password manager. I don't know what to say except that... I don't. I'm happy to have a password manager literally just manage passwords and allow me to use other tooling (like form memory in a browser) for this other stuff. > Exposure of the master password alone exposes all of your site passwords...If you accidentally type or paste your master password into email, IM, or social media, an attacker can leverage that alone to derive all of your site-specific passwords. Yeah, I get it - that's the same argument the others in this thread are making. But I'm not going to accidentally type along seed, like a 10-word sentence with punctuation, into any of those places. This seems like a completely absurd argument to me.
0xfeba 9y ago
Cloud managed (but still pretty damn secure): LastPass or 1Password You manage security: KeePass I use KeePass with a keyfile and password. The DB is stored and sync'd across devices in DropBox, I have my DB and key regularly backed up on a USB drive. The key is also present on some machines that I cannot easily add the USB to (eg. phone). It's the only password I need to remember -- I have literally hundreds (400+) of accounts. I do not regret it at all -- but it was a huge pain to migrate everything to it. I also store my Google authenticator initial QR codes on it, in PNG format.
- Splines 9y ago
  KeePass can also generate TOTP codes. Kind of ruins the point of these codes, but if you're already storing the QR codes on it, you can go a step further and just get KeePass to generate the output code for you. https://bitbucket.org/devinmartin/keeotp/wiki/Home https://bitbucket.org/devinmartin/keeotp/wiki/Home
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    If you wish to retain the "two factor" aspect, you can put your 2FA codes in a separate keepass database. You do lose the "two separate devices" bit of extra security (your threat is now keepass-aware malware or keyloggers with filesystem access), but if your one db is compromised the 2fa codes are not (and vice versa). However, storing 2fa codes alongside your password is still more secure than not. If the service password is compromised without the 2fa seed (main threats: MITM, phishing), the one-time password prevents the account from being immediately compromised.
  - 0xfeba 9y ago
    "One of these days" I'm going to get a safe and print them off and remove them digitally.
- tptacek 9y ago
  1Password doesn't have to be "cloud managed" the way LastPass (ick) is. You can do pretty much everything in 1Password native clientside, and that's what you should do. 1Password is basically the gold standard for commercial password managers, and I think probably the only commercial password manager you should consider.
Splines 9y ago
The problem with this style of password management is twofold: 1. You can't change your master password without changing every other password (upon refresh - looks like others mentioned that already) 2. You can't modify the output of your deterministic password algorithm to adhere to sites with weird password requirements
tptacek 9y ago
You should use 1Password or "pass" or, if a glutton for punishment, KeePassX, and honestly, I think you should use them to the exclusion of all other password managers. You can lower your security with a bad password manager. I agree with everything Tony Arcieri wrote about deterministic password managers here: https://tonyarcieri.com/4-fatal-flaws-in-deterministic-password-managers https://tonyarcieri.com/4-fatal-flaws-in-deterministic-passw.... Before you consider a deterministic password manager, just use "pass".
- FoxInBoxers 9y ago
  Does your KeePassX recommendation include the Windows equivalent it was ported from (KeePass)?
  - Semaphor 9y ago
    I've been using Keepass on Windows for several years now since I switched from LastPass. I like it a lot and as long as you are using it alone, syncing works great :)
scrollaway 9y ago
Replying to your comment (that wasn't here when I started writing) directly - I just wrote my suggestions and a starting guide here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421444 Hope this helps.
Ibethewalrus 9y ago
Safari on Mac already has a strong built-in password manager, it syncs with Safari on iOS
Fice 9y ago
I generate unique passwords using command-line tools like apg and pwgen and store them in an encrypted Emacs org-mode file [1]. Emacs can open files transparently via SSH [2], so I have easy remote access to my password store without having to rely on any external service. [1] http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/encrypting-files.html http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/encrypting-files.html [2] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode
AgentME 9y ago
I just use my browser's password manager. (It's not deterministic though; other responses cover that angle well.) Everyone seems to treat password managers as an arcane mysterious tool and acts temporarily amnesiac to the fact that every browser that anyone has used asks if you want to save your password. Both Firefox and Chrome let you sync your passwords between multiple computers, and I believe both do it in an end-to-end encrypted way.
- gruez 9y ago
  >and I believe both do it in an end-to-end encrypted way. in chrome, the end-to-end part is opt-in. https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en
- pwg 9y ago
  Relying on your browser's password storage is very risky: Sorry, But Your Browser Password Manager Probably Isn't Enough https://www.wired.com/2016/08/browser-password-manager-probably-isnt-enough/ https://www.wired.com/2016/08/browser-password-manager-proba... Why you shouldn't use your browser to store online passwords https://scotthelme.co.uk/storing-passwords-in-browser/ https://scotthelme.co.uk/storing-passwords-in-browser/
tvmalsv 9y ago
I've been using a manager called Enpass [1] for over a year now and really like it. It has browser extensions (Chrome, FF, & Safari), local storage (with many cloud-sync options), and apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, etc. The desktop versions are free and the mobile version is about $10/platform (lifetime license). I have no connection with the company, just a very pleased user. [1] https://www.enpass.io/ https://www.enpass.io/
- calcifer 9y ago
  Another recommendation for Enpass. I started using it because they had a great desktop Linux version which worked perfectly with their Firefox & Chrome plugins. After that, paying $10 for the Android version was a no-brainer.
Trundle 9y ago
If that's all you're after then nullpass fits the bill exactly. http://www.nullpass.org/ http://www.nullpass.org/ Warning though, I stopped using it because seed + domain doesn't guarantee that the password will fit the sites password requirements.
electic 9y ago
For me, I use pass cli. Gets the job done.
jedisct1 9y ago
Enpass.
gmoore 9y ago
Password Safe is a good one...
greggarious 9y ago
Personally, as an OSX user I use KeePassXC[1]. It's a fork of the original KeePass better designed to be cross platform. If you want to sync across multiple computers, you can throw it in whatever file sharing service (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) you use. Personally, I prefer Spideroak[2] due to their strong privacy policy. [1] https://keepassxc.org https://keepassxc.org [2] https://spideroak.com/one/ https://spideroak.com/one/

by jMyles 9y ago

vlunkr 9y ago

Someone please build this if it doesn't exist already!

0xfeba 9y ago
IIRC Someone has before, either here or reddit but it was terribly implemented. Use LastPass, 1Password, or KeePass.

zootboy 9y ago

Except this all but negates the benefits of a password manager. Now if someone steals your master password, they can generate every single password you use. Use something like Keepass / KeepassXC. Yes, it's somewhat less convenient, but remember that security and convenience are always a trade-off.

jMyles 9y ago
> Except this all but negates the benefits of a password manager. It preserves the main benefit: that I no longer need to remember a separate password for each domain in order to stop sharing passwords across them. > Now if someone steals your master password, they can generate every single password you use. So it's just a matter of keeping the seed in the user's head and nowhere else. Right? That doesn't seem to be any more serious a security challenge than keeping secure an encrypted datastore full of passwords.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- shkkmo 9y ago
  > So it's just a matter of keeping the seed in the user's head and nowhere else. Right? Until you enter it on a compromised system to generate a password...

mulmen 9y ago

If it's deterministic then anyone who gets your seed has all your passwords.

jMyles 9y ago
But it's the same in any case, right? It's always, "if an attacker gets your <x>, they have all of your passwords." The question is: are they any more likely to gain a seed that I keep only in my head vs. a list of passwords in an encrypted datastore?
- gervase 9y ago
  Except you won't keep it only in your head: you'll be typing it into a computer at some point. Really, in either case, you should also be using token-based 2FA as well.
  - jMyles 9y ago
    OK, so a surreptitious keylogger still defeats this config. I'm OK with that. My entire life presumes trust from my keyboard to my computer. I mean, if that were my main concerns, I'd have to rethink most of the bedrock security precautions I take, like passphrases for private SSH keys, etc. At the end of the day: I understand the risks and view them as absolutely acceptable in order to gain reasonable portability in a password manager.
- mulmen 9y ago
  In the case of a password manager they would need the database and the master password. In the deterministic case they only need the seed.
- domador 9y ago
  They're still different, the two schemes. In the case of a traditional password manager, an attacker would need to get your master password and the password datastore. In the case of datastores stored locally, rather than online, that's still two separate steps. In the case of your idea, once an attacker knows the seed, they have everything. Furthermore, if there's some weakness in the algorithm you use to generate passwords from the seed, then some site which has one of your deterministically-generated passwords could potentially breach the weak algorithm to reverse the process and obtain your seed, along with all your other passwords. Lastly, with a traditional password manager, you can change the master password at any time. Would you be able to change your seed when needed, or would you need to regenerate your passwords for EVERY site, if you need change the seed because it's been compromised?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gevz 9y ago

It seems that you might not need a good password manager for this type of scenario. Password manager for me is the one that stores unique passwords for each login. I don't know the majority of my passowrds

loeg 9y ago

The problem with the seed-only approach is you have to remember the password policy of every website, at the time you registered, in order to regenerate the password used.

TheRealWatson 9y ago

What if you need to update the password of one of the sites (e. g. this disqus breach) ? What if the domain name changes?

jMyles 9y ago
Maybe the program can take an integer nonce in addition. Then you have to track how many times you've used it for a particular domain. And if the domain name changes: you just keep generating for the old domain and tell the program to override. These seem like relatively simple challenges.

comex 9y ago

A better argument against deterministic password generators than the current replies to your post is that if you have to change your password on a given site - due to password expiration, ‘forgot password’, security breaches, etc. - you have to change the seed, and remember which seed you’re using for which site. There are some others: https://tonyarcieri.com/4-fatal-flaws-in-deterministic-password-managers https://tonyarcieri.com/4-fatal-flaws-in-deterministic-passw... But if you want to use one anyway, that blog post links to a bunch of them.

jMyles 9y ago
Ahh, thank you. This is the kind of refutation I need. I'll read up and decide. As for your specific qualm: I have to imagine that this can be solved by adding a numerically-determined nonce (so that I can say, "this is my 2nd password on disqus", etc) without having to fashion a new key. edit: OK, so I have read the article. Here are my reactions to the author's four concerns: * #1: Password schemes > Unfortunately, sites have wildly varying and often conflicting password requirements: non-alphanumeric symbols are mandatory! Passwords must be alphanumeric only! Capital letters required! Passwords must be lower-case only! Passwords must be at least 12 characters long! Passwords must be at most 8 characters long! > While many of these requirements seem silly and in a perfect world all sites would adopt the new NIST password guidelines, reality is messy and there is no single deterministic password generation scheme which can accommodate the password policies of all sites. There aren't that many different schemes. Maybe a grand total of three dozen? I think that the program can simply have a user-updated registry (perhaps that's shared) of schemes, and the generator accounts for this. This seems like... maybe 150 lines of Python. #2) Revocation and new passwords > We could ask the user to remember the site-by-site counter and input the correct counter value to derive the correct password. But I think this is silly. Umm, that's a strange argument. I don't think that's silly. I think it's highly practical. Currently, users remember a shitload of different details for different domains, including different usernames (this one was taken here, that one didn't meet the scheme there, etc) and often slightly different passwords. Making them remember an integer that will rarely be larger than 3 instead of a password seems awesome. Worse case scenario, they can keep trying until they get the right one. > You can’t store credit card numbers or bank account numbers in such a vault. > You can’t put arbitrary cryptographic keys in such a vault. > You can’t store randomly selected answers to security questions in such a vault. > I consider this to be part of the basic functionality of a password manager. I don't know what to say except that... I don't. I'm happy to have a password manager literally just manage passwords and allow me to use other tooling (like form memory in a browser) for this other stuff. > Exposure of the master password alone exposes all of your site passwords...If you accidentally type or paste your master password into email, IM, or social media, an attacker can leverage that alone to derive all of your site-specific passwords. Yeah, I get it - that's the same argument the others in this thread are making. But I'm not going to accidentally type along seed, like a 10-word sentence with punctuation, into any of those places. This seems like a completely absurd argument to me.

0xfeba 9y ago

Cloud managed (but still pretty damn secure): LastPass or 1Password You manage security: KeePass I use KeePass with a keyfile and password. The DB is stored and sync'd across devices in DropBox, I have my DB and key regularly backed up on a USB drive. The key is also present on some machines that I cannot easily add the USB to (eg. phone). It's the only password I need to remember -- I have literally hundreds (400+) of accounts. I do not regret it at all -- but it was a huge pain to migrate everything to it. I also store my Google authenticator initial QR codes on it, in PNG format.

Splines 9y ago
KeePass can also generate TOTP codes. Kind of ruins the point of these codes, but if you're already storing the QR codes on it, you can go a step further and just get KeePass to generate the output code for you. https://bitbucket.org/devinmartin/keeotp/wiki/Home https://bitbucket.org/devinmartin/keeotp/wiki/Home
- scrollaway 9y ago
  If you wish to retain the "two factor" aspect, you can put your 2FA codes in a separate keepass database. You do lose the "two separate devices" bit of extra security (your threat is now keepass-aware malware or keyloggers with filesystem access), but if your one db is compromised the 2fa codes are not (and vice versa). However, storing 2fa codes alongside your password is still more secure than not. If the service password is compromised without the 2fa seed (main threats: MITM, phishing), the one-time password prevents the account from being immediately compromised.
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  "One of these days" I'm going to get a safe and print them off and remove them digitally.
tptacek 9y ago
1Password doesn't have to be "cloud managed" the way LastPass (ick) is. You can do pretty much everything in 1Password native clientside, and that's what you should do. 1Password is basically the gold standard for commercial password managers, and I think probably the only commercial password manager you should consider.

Splines 9y ago

The problem with this style of password management is twofold: 1. You can't change your master password without changing every other password (upon refresh - looks like others mentioned that already) 2. You can't modify the output of your deterministic password algorithm to adhere to sites with weird password requirements

tptacek 9y ago

You should use 1Password or "pass" or, if a glutton for punishment, KeePassX, and honestly, I think you should use them to the exclusion of all other password managers. You can lower your security with a bad password manager. I agree with everything Tony Arcieri wrote about deterministic password managers here: https://tonyarcieri.com/4-fatal-flaws-in-deterministic-password-managers https://tonyarcieri.com/4-fatal-flaws-in-deterministic-passw.... Before you consider a deterministic password manager, just use "pass".

FoxInBoxers 9y ago
Does your KeePassX recommendation include the Windows equivalent it was ported from (KeePass)?
- Semaphor 9y ago
  I've been using Keepass on Windows for several years now since I switched from LastPass. I like it a lot and as long as you are using it alone, syncing works great :)

scrollaway 9y ago

Replying to your comment (that wasn't here when I started writing) directly - I just wrote my suggestions and a starting guide here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421444 Hope this helps.

Ibethewalrus 9y ago

Safari on Mac already has a strong built-in password manager, it syncs with Safari on iOS

Fice 9y ago

I generate unique passwords using command-line tools like apg and pwgen and store them in an encrypted Emacs org-mode file [1]. Emacs can open files transparently via SSH [2], so I have easy remote access to my password store without having to rely on any external service. [1] http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/encrypting-files.html http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/encrypting-files.html [2] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode

AgentME 9y ago

I just use my browser's password manager. (It's not deterministic though; other responses cover that angle well.) Everyone seems to treat password managers as an arcane mysterious tool and acts temporarily amnesiac to the fact that every browser that anyone has used asks if you want to save your password. Both Firefox and Chrome let you sync your passwords between multiple computers, and I believe both do it in an end-to-end encrypted way.

gruez 9y ago
>and I believe both do it in an end-to-end encrypted way. in chrome, the end-to-end part is opt-in. https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en
pwg 9y ago
Relying on your browser's password storage is very risky: Sorry, But Your Browser Password Manager Probably Isn't Enough https://www.wired.com/2016/08/browser-password-manager-probably-isnt-enough/ https://www.wired.com/2016/08/browser-password-manager-proba... Why you shouldn't use your browser to store online passwords https://scotthelme.co.uk/storing-passwords-in-browser/ https://scotthelme.co.uk/storing-passwords-in-browser/

tvmalsv 9y ago

I've been using a manager called Enpass [1] for over a year now and really like it. It has browser extensions (Chrome, FF, & Safari), local storage (with many cloud-sync options), and apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, etc. The desktop versions are free and the mobile version is about $10/platform (lifetime license). I have no connection with the company, just a very pleased user. [1] https://www.enpass.io/ https://www.enpass.io/

calcifer 9y ago
Another recommendation for Enpass. I started using it because they had a great desktop Linux version which worked perfectly with their Firefox & Chrome plugins. After that, paying $10 for the Android version was a no-brainer.

Trundle 9y ago

If that's all you're after then nullpass fits the bill exactly. http://www.nullpass.org/ http://www.nullpass.org/ Warning though, I stopped using it because seed + domain doesn't guarantee that the password will fit the sites password requirements.

electic 9y ago

For me, I use pass cli. Gets the job done.

jedisct1 9y ago

Enpass.

gmoore 9y ago

Password Safe is a good one...

greggarious 9y ago

Personally, as an OSX user I use KeePassXC[1]. It's a fork of the original KeePass better designed to be cross platform. If you want to sync across multiple computers, you can throw it in whatever file sharing service (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) you use. Personally, I prefer Spideroak[2] due to their strong privacy policy. [1] https://keepassxc.org https://keepassxc.org [2] https://spideroak.com/one/ https://spideroak.com/one/