10 ms·

The threat scenario described by the article: If someone within LastPass wanted to gain access to your passwords (e.g. rogue employees, or via court order) ther

by jzl 8y ago

The threat scenario described by the article: If someone within LastPass wanted to gain access to your passwords (e.g. rogue employees, or via court order) there is a way that the extension could be made to upload your vault key back to LP if you click on certain things within the extension, namely some parts of the preferences, or something like that. Any such change would be publicly detectable, but could theoretically be targeted to avoid widespread notice. So in other words, the vault itself is not fundamentally flawed, but the design of the current extension doesn't proactively firewall against LastPass turning into a bad actor. My $.02: Given that all the cloud-based password managers have their own phone (and even desktop) apps, this seems like a moot point since a bad actor could push out an app update that does anything with your keys anyway. As a long-time LastPass user I appreciate this kind of analysis, but this is just not something I have enough cycles in the day to let bother me. BTW the last time I opened my preferences was 3 years ago. LastPass is quite open to scrutiny and what's important is how responsive they are to new findings -- very responsive, from everything I've ever seen. Including many findings from the author of the article. By far the biggest problem with LastPass is that it sometimes just doesn't apply (or misapplies) the password or username to the appropriate form entries, and I have to go find it and copy it. Occasionally it also misses the saving of a new password (that it generated) and I have to put it in the vault by hand. I suspect this is a really hard problem given the massive variety of forms out there, but would be curious to hear if other password managers never have these issues.

vezycash 8y ago
The user experience declined slightly after lastpass got acquired. For a year or two, lastpass for Firefox didn't have the copy option for usernames and passwords. I had to edit, show password, then copy. The autofill problem became pronounced after the acquisition as well probably through no fault of the new owner. Many sites like Google and Microsoft have switched to a multi-step login process where username is entered first and password is entered on a different page Also a proof of sites abusing autofill & hidden forms to steal passwords probably influenced the current situation.
- felixschl 8y ago
  I found my perfect ux with password-store, xmonad, and xmonad-contrib's pass prompt module. It takes a bit of time setting up but it pays for itself. I don't store any passwords in my browser and filling in passwords is super quick with fuzzy completion.
  - keypusher 8y ago
    How do you sync the passwords between devices (including mobile & non-linux) and keep them backed up?
    - resoluteteeth 8y ago
      Not the op, but it's easy to sync and back up because it uses git. Password store on android also supports this.
      - felixschl 8y ago
        Yup, it's just git. Passwords are files in a git tree so you usually do not run into any conflicts unless you manage to change the same password on both ends, which also should be easy to resolve.
        laurentl 8y ago
        How do you manage mobile (iOS in particular)? UP (uncle post) mentions a home-made Android app to sync... is there a more mainstream option?
    - zeendo 8y ago
      I use the same setup as the GP. password-store uses git+gnupg so backing them up is a matter of distributing the git repo. My git repo lives on each of my laptops and I have a 'central' host of it...so it's backed up via distribution. For getting passwords to my phone I use a homemade Android app + small web app that sends them to my phone encrypted on-demand from my laptop or desktop. There are Android apps for using password-store but you have to put your GnuPG keys on your phone for that and I prefer not to do that.
trickstra 8y ago
> Given that all the cloud-based password managers have their own phone (and even desktop) apps, this seems like a moot point since a bad actor could push out an app update that does anything with your keys anyway. This seems to me like a great argument to avoid all cloud based providers and their mobie apps. Especially when opensource, time tested, self-hosted solutions exist. You seem to be more concerned about UX than security. Compromising security for better comfort is not a very good strategy.
- Xylakant 8y ago
  > You seem to be more concerned about UX than security. Compromising security for better comfort is not a very good strategy. From my practical observation: People will go to great length to avoid dealing with a crappy UX. That can include falling back to "YOLO, I'll just use the same password everywhere" if the password management process is sufficiently atrocious. So I'd say good UX is part of the security concept, bad UX will compromise it.
  - techdragon 8y ago
    For me, the UX of maintaining an improved security posture is quite an important part of these products success, I get improved security and the product doesn’t make me think. The only way it could be better for me as a long term LastPass customer is if I had a good/safe tool to synchronise with the macOS keychain for improved redundancy and providing myself a future “exit strategy”, I rarely have to think about my use now that its integrated into the native iOS password prompt.
- close04 8y ago
  > You seem to be more concerned about UX than security. Compromising security for better comfort is not a very good strategy. Maybe, but a good UX goes a long way to convincing people to use the solution. The best security solution is the one you actually use.
- rocqua 8y ago
  > Compromising security for better comfort is not a very good strategy. This approach is exactly why the vast populace has essentially no security. I'd be glad if my parents were to switch to last-pass, as it is so much better then weak password re-use schemes. I'd say that compromising security for comfort is a given, its guaranteed to happen. The best strategy here is to make sure that users will have the most security after the compromise.
manderley 8y ago
You can edit form fields for every password entry to fix the "filling out the wrong form entry" problem.
forty 8y ago
> My $.02: Given that all the cloud-based password managers have their own phone (and even desktop) apps, this seems like a moot point since a bad actor could push out an app update that does anything with your keys anyway. I respectfully disagree that apps are the same as webpages. The big difference is that apps are signed, so if things are done properly, you only have to trust the devs of the app and whoever operate their CI. Web pages on the other hand have no such security (yet), which means you also need to trust the cloud provider, the CDN, the fact that the website was not hacked, the ops team of the password manager, and probably anyone who is able to make a valid SSL certificate and might do MITM... Disclosure: I work for a company that makes a cloud-based password manager.
- jsutton 8y ago
  If, like most people, you're downloading the extension via Google/Safari/Firefox, then it really is no different than apps.
  - forty 8y ago
    Extensions are fine. The issue is only for pages served from a webserver.
AndyMcConachie 8y ago
I too don't have time to worry about this kind of attack, which is why I don't use web-based password managers. I just use KeePassX and copy/paste. I don't have time to really think about all this complexity and what it means for my security. So I just avoid it entirely.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  I use KeePass too, great little program. It isn't as "mobile" but I don't really see the benefits of online solutions. It certainly isn't added security. The website from the service in question also suffers from severe JS-errors on their page (FF 66).
  - sethammons 8y ago
    KeePass here too. On Android, it is absolutely terrible paired with Dropbox. I'm not sure who to blame, but the database will not stay up-to-date and I have to click and re-open my key file _every_time_. On a fresh install, it stays good for several months, then it will get out of sync and I'm not sure how to get it back to in sync.
    - Spare_account 8y ago
      Which Android port are you using? There isn't an offical one, so you may have better results trying a different one.
      - sethammons 8y ago
        Fair enough. I just noticed down below someone was using keepass2android or similar. I'm using keepassdroid, and I noticed they have an issues page. Filed one. I might investigate bitwarden if I get bored[1]. Thanks btw, it really did not occur to me actually that there would be other versions. [1]something that will not likely happen between family, work, and chores around having a large property
        8y ago
mannykannot 8y ago
> LastPass is quite open to scrutiny and what's important is how responsive they are to new findings -- very responsive, from everything I've ever seen. Including many findings from the author of the article. That is nice, but it is not sufficient mitigation for the issue to be dismissed. There are more concerns in this article than the title issue, and it seems that in the past, LastPass has made some questionable design decisions that did turn out to have problems that needed to be fixed. I hope and assume that, prior to adopting these design choices, LastPass analyzed the risk and concluded that it had avoided creating any vulnerabilities, but nevertheless, there were some that it had overlooked. If you continue in this manner, you are increasing the risk of creating a zero-day vulnerability that gets exploited, and I would guess that a central repository of passwords would be a particularly attractive target for bad actors. I would much prefer a security company to stay away from questionable design choices, rather than have rather complex and more-or-less tendentious arguments that the way they are doing it is safe, especially when there have been cases in the past where their arguments were not sound. > This is just not something I have enough cycles in the day to let bother me. Another reason to prefer KISS. If the vendor had refrained from making questionable choices that require complex analysis (such as the decision to fall back to server-provided pages for parts of the browser extension functionality), trying to figure out whether it matters to you would be less of a problem -- to the point, maybe, where you don't fall back on an "I can't be bothered" attitude.
DennisP 8y ago
The main annoyance I've had is that for some sites it tries to save 2FA one-time passwords as the new password. Accidentally click "ok" and you have to go through password recovery.
- syntheticnature 8y ago
  Password history is your friend, there. My annoyance is lately it's become less skilled at detecting password changes properly, even when I'm invoking 'Generate Password'.
  - DennisP 8y ago
    Ooh, I didn't know about that feature. Just googled it. Thanks :)
  - bloopernova 8y ago
    Lastpass' password history saved my wife from losing multiple accounts. (Chrome's password autofill was overwriting Lastpass and thus messing up certain sites)
jaypeg25 8y ago
Regarding your issue with LastPass, I use Dashlane and those issues used to plague me when I first started using it (~2 years ago). I recently noticed though that it's gotten way better.
chalst 8y ago
With respect to the password-creation problem, I find the entropy of the passwords LP creates too low in any case, so I create them from /dev/urandom + base64. I've never had LP fail to recognise these hand-generated passwords.
- crazygringo 8y ago
  > I find the entropy of the passwords LP creates too low What do you mean? How are you measuring that? How do you think that would make a password of the same length and character set less secure in a practical way?
  - chalst 8y ago
    The password length defaults to too short, and in some circumstances is seeded poorly. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/77345/security-of-lastpass-password-generator/77408 https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/77345/security-...
    - crazygringo 8y ago
      You can change the password length to whatever you want... and your link says it uses window.crypto functionality which appears to be supported in every single browser including back to IE11. [1] So it seems like LastPass-generated passwords are fine? [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/crypto https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/cryp...
      - chalst 8y ago
        Probably. But in the link I posted, did you notice the qualifier "as secure as your browser's implementation of the Web Cryptography API"? Also, AIUI, Webkit implements no PRNG so some Webkit-based browsers might have stupid implementations of the SubtleCrypto object. The thing is, there is a chain of things you have to trust wrt the LP generator: Has the OS implemented the backend API correctly? Were there issues in the browser build that mess up the entropy derived from the OS seed? Has the Javascript done anything stupid? In comparison, I have complete confidence in the entropy of the passwords I generate via CLI. Wrt. password length: yes you can change it. But the dialog is a bit of inconvenience that tilts away from the hassle of switching to my terminal and typing "suggest-password". And I have something of a moral objection to password generators that default to insufficient entropy.
zupzupper 8y ago
>By far the biggest problem with LastPass is that it sometimes just doesn't apply (or misapplies) the password or username to the appropriate form entries, and I have to go find it and copy it. Occasionally it also misses the saving of a new password (that it generated) and I have to put it in the vault by hand. I suspect this is a really hard problem given the massive variety of forms out there, but would be curious to hear if other password managers never have these issues. Agreed, ambiguously named form input fields cause all kinds of havok, I helped our UX team track down one in our application because it was breaking my lastpass =) For the second issue, I've just adjusted my workflow to accommodate LastPass's peculiarities. I just click "Generate Secure Password", copy it to the clipboard and fill the form myself. Then I have a copy of the password on the clipboard should LP miss adding the site properly. While it's a slight pain to work around that particular issue, it's far better than what I used to do with regards to password reuse.
- 1024core 8y ago
  > copy it to the clipboard and fill the form myself. I'm not that familiar with mobile dev, but could a rogue app just sit in the background, making a copy of whatever's in the clipboard?
  - shawnz 8y ago
    Yes, Keepass for example avoids this by pasting some of the characters with the clipboard and some of the characters by simulating keypresses. See: https://keepass.info/%0D/help/v2/autotype_obfuscation.html https://keepass.info/%0D/help/v2/autotype_obfuscation.html Lastpass mitigates the issue somewhat by clearing the clipboard after a certain amount of time.
  - yani 8y ago
    If you have such an application installed... the system has already been compromised.
- jsutton 8y ago
  LastPass recently made a change to how they save generated passwords, it'll prompt you right after filling it instead of waiting for the login to succeed.
xg15 8y ago
> My $.02: Given that all the cloud-based password managers have their own phone (and even desktop) apps, this seems like a moot point since a bad actor could push out an app update that does anything with your keys anyway. I think this is a good argument against cloud-based or auto-updating password managers in general.

by jzl 8y ago

vezycash 8y ago

The user experience declined slightly after lastpass got acquired. For a year or two, lastpass for Firefox didn't have the copy option for usernames and passwords. I had to edit, show password, then copy. The autofill problem became pronounced after the acquisition as well probably through no fault of the new owner. Many sites like Google and Microsoft have switched to a multi-step login process where username is entered first and password is entered on a different page Also a proof of sites abusing autofill & hidden forms to steal passwords probably influenced the current situation.

felixschl 8y ago
I found my perfect ux with password-store, xmonad, and xmonad-contrib's pass prompt module. It takes a bit of time setting up but it pays for itself. I don't store any passwords in my browser and filling in passwords is super quick with fuzzy completion.
- keypusher 8y ago
  How do you sync the passwords between devices (including mobile & non-linux) and keep them backed up?
  - resoluteteeth 8y ago
    Not the op, but it's easy to sync and back up because it uses git. Password store on android also supports this.
    - felixschl 8y ago
      Yup, it's just git. Passwords are files in a git tree so you usually do not run into any conflicts unless you manage to change the same password on both ends, which also should be easy to resolve.
      - laurentl 8y ago
        How do you manage mobile (iOS in particular)? UP (uncle post) mentions a home-made Android app to sync... is there a more mainstream option?
  - zeendo 8y ago
    I use the same setup as the GP. password-store uses git+gnupg so backing them up is a matter of distributing the git repo. My git repo lives on each of my laptops and I have a 'central' host of it...so it's backed up via distribution. For getting passwords to my phone I use a homemade Android app + small web app that sends them to my phone encrypted on-demand from my laptop or desktop. There are Android apps for using password-store but you have to put your GnuPG keys on your phone for that and I prefer not to do that.

trickstra 8y ago

> Given that all the cloud-based password managers have their own phone (and even desktop) apps, this seems like a moot point since a bad actor could push out an app update that does anything with your keys anyway. This seems to me like a great argument to avoid all cloud based providers and their mobie apps. Especially when opensource, time tested, self-hosted solutions exist. You seem to be more concerned about UX than security. Compromising security for better comfort is not a very good strategy.

Xylakant 8y ago
> You seem to be more concerned about UX than security. Compromising security for better comfort is not a very good strategy. From my practical observation: People will go to great length to avoid dealing with a crappy UX. That can include falling back to "YOLO, I'll just use the same password everywhere" if the password management process is sufficiently atrocious. So I'd say good UX is part of the security concept, bad UX will compromise it.
- techdragon 8y ago
  For me, the UX of maintaining an improved security posture is quite an important part of these products success, I get improved security and the product doesn’t make me think. The only way it could be better for me as a long term LastPass customer is if I had a good/safe tool to synchronise with the macOS keychain for improved redundancy and providing myself a future “exit strategy”, I rarely have to think about my use now that its integrated into the native iOS password prompt.
close04 8y ago
> You seem to be more concerned about UX than security. Compromising security for better comfort is not a very good strategy. Maybe, but a good UX goes a long way to convincing people to use the solution. The best security solution is the one you actually use.
rocqua 8y ago
> Compromising security for better comfort is not a very good strategy. This approach is exactly why the vast populace has essentially no security. I'd be glad if my parents were to switch to last-pass, as it is so much better then weak password re-use schemes. I'd say that compromising security for comfort is a given, its guaranteed to happen. The best strategy here is to make sure that users will have the most security after the compromise.

manderley 8y ago

You can edit form fields for every password entry to fix the "filling out the wrong form entry" problem.

forty 8y ago

> My $.02: Given that all the cloud-based password managers have their own phone (and even desktop) apps, this seems like a moot point since a bad actor could push out an app update that does anything with your keys anyway. I respectfully disagree that apps are the same as webpages. The big difference is that apps are signed, so if things are done properly, you only have to trust the devs of the app and whoever operate their CI. Web pages on the other hand have no such security (yet), which means you also need to trust the cloud provider, the CDN, the fact that the website was not hacked, the ops team of the password manager, and probably anyone who is able to make a valid SSL certificate and might do MITM... Disclosure: I work for a company that makes a cloud-based password manager.

jsutton 8y ago
If, like most people, you're downloading the extension via Google/Safari/Firefox, then it really is no different than apps.
- forty 8y ago
  Extensions are fine. The issue is only for pages served from a webserver.

AndyMcConachie 8y ago

I too don't have time to worry about this kind of attack, which is why I don't use web-based password managers. I just use KeePassX and copy/paste. I don't have time to really think about all this complexity and what it means for my security. So I just avoid it entirely.

raxxorrax 8y ago
I use KeePass too, great little program. It isn't as "mobile" but I don't really see the benefits of online solutions. It certainly isn't added security. The website from the service in question also suffers from severe JS-errors on their page (FF 66).
- sethammons 8y ago
  KeePass here too. On Android, it is absolutely terrible paired with Dropbox. I'm not sure who to blame, but the database will not stay up-to-date and I have to click and re-open my key file _every_time_. On a fresh install, it stays good for several months, then it will get out of sync and I'm not sure how to get it back to in sync.
  - Spare_account 8y ago
    Which Android port are you using? There isn't an offical one, so you may have better results trying a different one.
    - sethammons 8y ago
      Fair enough. I just noticed down below someone was using keepass2android or similar. I'm using keepassdroid, and I noticed they have an issues page. Filed one. I might investigate bitwarden if I get bored[1]. Thanks btw, it really did not occur to me actually that there would be other versions. [1]something that will not likely happen between family, work, and chores around having a large property
      - 8y ago

mannykannot 8y ago

> LastPass is quite open to scrutiny and what's important is how responsive they are to new findings -- very responsive, from everything I've ever seen. Including many findings from the author of the article. That is nice, but it is not sufficient mitigation for the issue to be dismissed. There are more concerns in this article than the title issue, and it seems that in the past, LastPass has made some questionable design decisions that did turn out to have problems that needed to be fixed. I hope and assume that, prior to adopting these design choices, LastPass analyzed the risk and concluded that it had avoided creating any vulnerabilities, but nevertheless, there were some that it had overlooked. If you continue in this manner, you are increasing the risk of creating a zero-day vulnerability that gets exploited, and I would guess that a central repository of passwords would be a particularly attractive target for bad actors. I would much prefer a security company to stay away from questionable design choices, rather than have rather complex and more-or-less tendentious arguments that the way they are doing it is safe, especially when there have been cases in the past where their arguments were not sound. > This is just not something I have enough cycles in the day to let bother me. Another reason to prefer KISS. If the vendor had refrained from making questionable choices that require complex analysis (such as the decision to fall back to server-provided pages for parts of the browser extension functionality), trying to figure out whether it matters to you would be less of a problem -- to the point, maybe, where you don't fall back on an "I can't be bothered" attitude.

DennisP 8y ago

The main annoyance I've had is that for some sites it tries to save 2FA one-time passwords as the new password. Accidentally click "ok" and you have to go through password recovery.

syntheticnature 8y ago
Password history is your friend, there. My annoyance is lately it's become less skilled at detecting password changes properly, even when I'm invoking 'Generate Password'.
- DennisP 8y ago
  Ooh, I didn't know about that feature. Just googled it. Thanks :)
- bloopernova 8y ago
  Lastpass' password history saved my wife from losing multiple accounts. (Chrome's password autofill was overwriting Lastpass and thus messing up certain sites)

jaypeg25 8y ago

Regarding your issue with LastPass, I use Dashlane and those issues used to plague me when I first started using it (~2 years ago). I recently noticed though that it's gotten way better.

chalst 8y ago

With respect to the password-creation problem, I find the entropy of the passwords LP creates too low in any case, so I create them from /dev/urandom + base64. I've never had LP fail to recognise these hand-generated passwords.

crazygringo 8y ago
> I find the entropy of the passwords LP creates too low What do you mean? How are you measuring that? How do you think that would make a password of the same length and character set less secure in a practical way?
- chalst 8y ago
  The password length defaults to too short, and in some circumstances is seeded poorly. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/77345/security-of-lastpass-password-generator/77408 https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/77345/security-...
  - crazygringo 8y ago
    You can change the password length to whatever you want... and your link says it uses window.crypto functionality which appears to be supported in every single browser including back to IE11. [1] So it seems like LastPass-generated passwords are fine? [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/crypto https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/cryp...
    - chalst 8y ago
      Probably. But in the link I posted, did you notice the qualifier "as secure as your browser's implementation of the Web Cryptography API"? Also, AIUI, Webkit implements no PRNG so some Webkit-based browsers might have stupid implementations of the SubtleCrypto object. The thing is, there is a chain of things you have to trust wrt the LP generator: Has the OS implemented the backend API correctly? Were there issues in the browser build that mess up the entropy derived from the OS seed? Has the Javascript done anything stupid? In comparison, I have complete confidence in the entropy of the passwords I generate via CLI. Wrt. password length: yes you can change it. But the dialog is a bit of inconvenience that tilts away from the hassle of switching to my terminal and typing "suggest-password". And I have something of a moral objection to password generators that default to insufficient entropy.

zupzupper 8y ago

>By far the biggest problem with LastPass is that it sometimes just doesn't apply (or misapplies) the password or username to the appropriate form entries, and I have to go find it and copy it. Occasionally it also misses the saving of a new password (that it generated) and I have to put it in the vault by hand. I suspect this is a really hard problem given the massive variety of forms out there, but would be curious to hear if other password managers never have these issues. Agreed, ambiguously named form input fields cause all kinds of havok, I helped our UX team track down one in our application because it was breaking my lastpass =) For the second issue, I've just adjusted my workflow to accommodate LastPass's peculiarities. I just click "Generate Secure Password", copy it to the clipboard and fill the form myself. Then I have a copy of the password on the clipboard should LP miss adding the site properly. While it's a slight pain to work around that particular issue, it's far better than what I used to do with regards to password reuse.

1024core 8y ago
> copy it to the clipboard and fill the form myself. I'm not that familiar with mobile dev, but could a rogue app just sit in the background, making a copy of whatever's in the clipboard?
- shawnz 8y ago
  Yes, Keepass for example avoids this by pasting some of the characters with the clipboard and some of the characters by simulating keypresses. See: https://keepass.info/%0D/help/v2/autotype_obfuscation.html https://keepass.info/%0D/help/v2/autotype_obfuscation.html Lastpass mitigates the issue somewhat by clearing the clipboard after a certain amount of time.
- yani 8y ago
  If you have such an application installed... the system has already been compromised.
jsutton 8y ago
LastPass recently made a change to how they save generated passwords, it'll prompt you right after filling it instead of waiting for the login to succeed.

xg15 8y ago