5 ms·

I just checked my old account and it was configured to be 5000. I changed it and re-encrypts the data and uploads it, and then forces you to login again, presum

I just checked my old account and it was configured to be 5000. I changed it and re-encrypts the data and uploads it, and then forces you to login again, presumably to do server side part. Seems weird that they would have the number of rounds fixed from the time of account creation though. Surely it would be possible to increase the number of rounds over time. Edit: I should add that I have logged into this account within the past year or two. So if they're supposed to increase over time, it ain't worked.

bawolff 4y ago
It's also not really an obscure issue. For example, the owasp password cheatsheet talks about the need to increase the work factor over time - https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Password_Storage_Cheat_Sheet.html https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Password_Stor... . I would hope that password manager software would at least know the things that end up on "cheatsheets"
IgorPartola 4y ago
Why is this even a setting exposed to users? Shouldn’t this be entirely up to them to manage the correct work factor?
- crazygringo 4y ago
  100% agreed. Paying for a major brand password manager, you should assume that you are paying for them to always keep the security totally up-to-date with best practices. The idea that you are somehow responsible for finding an obscure setting not just in "Account settings" but in a separate "Advanced settings" that defaults to hidden, and knowing the appropriate number to set it to, boggles the mind.
  - SyzygistSix 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - brookst 4y ago
    “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”
    - thechao 4y ago
      There’s an entire novella of Arthur just finding this notice, right? It could be serialized into three one hour episodes of Dent, queuing & requeuing and just talking to others inqueue.
- roflyear 4y ago
  Bc product people are hilarious!
- Someone1234 4y ago
  Why not both? Keep in mind that this is a trade-off, it requires more computational power AND battery, so giving users access to the leavers makes sense (e.g. power users with nice equipment can pump up the number). That being said I do agree that it is up to the vendor to set AND enforce a new higher minimum. If someone logs in with 5K rounds, it should be changed to the new default (100k). On a related note Bitwarden also allows users to configure this. I recently increased mine to 150K rounds.
  - IgorPartola 4y ago
    I think it should allow you to change the schedule on which it increases the rounds, not set the actual number. It should tell you how many rounds it currently is at and how it will increase but the setting most people will want is High Security, Very High Security, Ludicrous Security.
  - mfer 4y ago
    Having the controls is great if you’re a technical person who knows what to do with them. 99.9%+ of people aren’t that technical person. Safe defaults need to be used and kept up to date for them.
- kodah 4y ago
  Because changing the number of rounds requires reencryption and it doesn't sound like they had a workflow for prompting batch reencryption other than through the setting. Ideally they'd manage that number and prompt the user to change it over time.
  - Gasp0de 4y ago
    It's not that difficult to do though? Just implement a mechanism that re-encrypts when the user enters their password.
    - kodah 4y ago
      I agree, there's workflows they could've built to solve this problem. I wasn't defending them in the slightest.
  - hejaodbsidndbd 4y ago
    [dead]
- babyshake 4y ago
  It's because bikeshedding emphasizes customization and easy to demo features over the type of design that actually helps most users.
- insanitybit 4y ago
  Because different hardware will have significant impact on this number. You need to figure out your tolerance. Maybe your tolerance is higher than they expect - cool, bump it up. I did that many many years ago, thankfully.
cshimmin 4y ago
Yeah I was a daily user until about a month or two ago. Didn't even know about this setting, and I still haven't figured out how to change it in the mobile app. But mine is definitely set to 5k. Still in the process of changing all my passwords...
brianshaler 4y ago
This is pretty wild. When you rotate your master password and it re-encrypts everything, that's a perfect opportunity to use a new iteration count. If they didn't want change the value for user's who were at an old default value, they at least could have nagged "your account is using an old/low value for an encryption setting, click here to use the latest recommended default" Of course, changing it now won't do any good with regard to previous leaks.
- insanitybit 4y ago
  They could have changed the setting any time the user logged in. I pointed out that they used too few rounds over a decade ago, I believe. To their credit, they increased the limit to 256K in response (it was much lower before).
crazygringo 4y ago
Yup mine was 5000 too. I'm baffled as to why they don't force an upgrade on everyone the next time they log in. Old accounts that haven't been touched in years, sure. But active accounts being used daily? This is really unfathomable.
arka2147483647 4y ago
> Seems weird that they would have the number of rounds fixed from the time of account creation though. Surely it would be possible to increase the number of rounds over time. Well, No. In metacode, pbkdf2 works something like: derived_password = pbkdf2(real_password, salt, 5000, ...); Encrypt(vault, derived_password); (See Wikipedia for more details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2) Point being, you can only change the number of rounds if you re-encrypt the vault, and you can only do that, if the users participates by giving their password to first un-encrypt it during that process. So it cannot be done silently in the background.
- mvonballmo 4y ago
  Agreed, it requires user-participation. However, LastPass could be proactive about this, perhaps including the number of rounds in its security check. It could tell you that your legacy account should be updated and guide you through it. That would be helpful. I have the standard 100,100 iterations, but had no idea that this was a feature I had to keep track of.
- gregmac 4y ago
  It's possible to silently do this as part of logging in. I've done this with normal login for several (legacy) systems I've worked on, migrating users from md5 or sha1 to better algorithms.
  - d1str0 4y ago
    Theres a big difference. If you’re hashing a password for storage you end up getting the password first. LastPass NEVER gets your master key server side. All encryption is done locally. Also, hashing a password is extremely quick. To unencrypt the full vault and re-encrypt it does take an amount of focused time. Might not be able to be done “silently” in the background, but obviously LP should have been forcing an upgrade on login.
    - coder543 4y ago
      > To unencrypt the full vault and re-encrypt it does take an amount of focused time. The entire vault should not be encrypted directly with the user's password. That would go against standard best practices. See this comment written hours before yours, right under the comment you replied to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34127993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34127993 There is no "big difference" here, and it could be done trivially during login. The fact that it would be done client side instead of server side is a very minor implementation detail.
vegardlarsen 4y ago
Mine seem to be set to 1 iteration, screenshot here: https://snabelen.no/@vegardlarsen/109575002998425618 https://snabelen.no/@vegardlarsen/109575002998425618 My account is very old, but this was hidden behind advanced settings. And I have used this account daily since I created it. Not having this increase from their end seems very unprofessional.
mattm 4y ago
Mine was also set to 5000
fluidcruft 4y ago
I have a really old account (pretty sure I started using it ~2010) and I use lastpass essentially daily. I've never looked at that setting and I see that mine is set to 100,100. So it's migrated sometime. But I do also have some vague memory of a lastpass incident years ago where there was a prompt that they wanted to re-encrypt everything preemptively.

bawolff 4y ago

It's also not really an obscure issue. For example, the owasp password cheatsheet talks about the need to increase the work factor over time - https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Password_Storage_Cheat_Sheet.html https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Password_Stor... . I would hope that password manager software would at least know the things that end up on "cheatsheets"

IgorPartola 4y ago

Why is this even a setting exposed to users? Shouldn’t this be entirely up to them to manage the correct work factor?

crazygringo 4y ago
100% agreed. Paying for a major brand password manager, you should assume that you are paying for them to always keep the security totally up-to-date with best practices. The idea that you are somehow responsible for finding an obscure setting not just in "Account settings" but in a separate "Advanced settings" that defaults to hidden, and knowing the appropriate number to set it to, boggles the mind.
- SyzygistSix 4y ago
  [flagged]
- brookst 4y ago
  “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”
  - thechao 4y ago
    There’s an entire novella of Arthur just finding this notice, right? It could be serialized into three one hour episodes of Dent, queuing & requeuing and just talking to others inqueue.
roflyear 4y ago
Bc product people are hilarious!
Someone1234 4y ago
Why not both? Keep in mind that this is a trade-off, it requires more computational power AND battery, so giving users access to the leavers makes sense (e.g. power users with nice equipment can pump up the number). That being said I do agree that it is up to the vendor to set AND enforce a new higher minimum. If someone logs in with 5K rounds, it should be changed to the new default (100k). On a related note Bitwarden also allows users to configure this. I recently increased mine to 150K rounds.
- IgorPartola 4y ago
  I think it should allow you to change the schedule on which it increases the rounds, not set the actual number. It should tell you how many rounds it currently is at and how it will increase but the setting most people will want is High Security, Very High Security, Ludicrous Security.
- mfer 4y ago
  Having the controls is great if you’re a technical person who knows what to do with them. 99.9%+ of people aren’t that technical person. Safe defaults need to be used and kept up to date for them.
kodah 4y ago
Because changing the number of rounds requires reencryption and it doesn't sound like they had a workflow for prompting batch reencryption other than through the setting. Ideally they'd manage that number and prompt the user to change it over time.
- Gasp0de 4y ago
  It's not that difficult to do though? Just implement a mechanism that re-encrypts when the user enters their password.
  - kodah 4y ago
    I agree, there's workflows they could've built to solve this problem. I wasn't defending them in the slightest.
- hejaodbsidndbd 4y ago
  [dead]
babyshake 4y ago
It's because bikeshedding emphasizes customization and easy to demo features over the type of design that actually helps most users.
insanitybit 4y ago
Because different hardware will have significant impact on this number. You need to figure out your tolerance. Maybe your tolerance is higher than they expect - cool, bump it up. I did that many many years ago, thankfully.

cshimmin 4y ago

Yeah I was a daily user until about a month or two ago. Didn't even know about this setting, and I still haven't figured out how to change it in the mobile app. But mine is definitely set to 5k. Still in the process of changing all my passwords...

brianshaler 4y ago

This is pretty wild. When you rotate your master password and it re-encrypts everything, that's a perfect opportunity to use a new iteration count. If they didn't want change the value for user's who were at an old default value, they at least could have nagged "your account is using an old/low value for an encryption setting, click here to use the latest recommended default" Of course, changing it now won't do any good with regard to previous leaks.

insanitybit 4y ago
They could have changed the setting any time the user logged in. I pointed out that they used too few rounds over a decade ago, I believe. To their credit, they increased the limit to 256K in response (it was much lower before).

crazygringo 4y ago

Yup mine was 5000 too. I'm baffled as to why they don't force an upgrade on everyone the next time they log in. Old accounts that haven't been touched in years, sure. But active accounts being used daily? This is really unfathomable.

arka2147483647 4y ago

> Seems weird that they would have the number of rounds fixed from the time of account creation though. Surely it would be possible to increase the number of rounds over time. Well, No. In metacode, pbkdf2 works something like: derived_password = pbkdf2(real_password, salt, 5000, ...); Encrypt(vault, derived_password); (See Wikipedia for more details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2) Point being, you can only change the number of rounds if you re-encrypt the vault, and you can only do that, if the users participates by giving their password to first un-encrypt it during that process. So it cannot be done silently in the background.

mvonballmo 4y ago
Agreed, it requires user-participation. However, LastPass could be proactive about this, perhaps including the number of rounds in its security check. It could tell you that your legacy account should be updated and guide you through it. That would be helpful. I have the standard 100,100 iterations, but had no idea that this was a feature I had to keep track of.
gregmac 4y ago
It's possible to silently do this as part of logging in. I've done this with normal login for several (legacy) systems I've worked on, migrating users from md5 or sha1 to better algorithms.
- d1str0 4y ago
  Theres a big difference. If you’re hashing a password for storage you end up getting the password first. LastPass NEVER gets your master key server side. All encryption is done locally. Also, hashing a password is extremely quick. To unencrypt the full vault and re-encrypt it does take an amount of focused time. Might not be able to be done “silently” in the background, but obviously LP should have been forcing an upgrade on login.
  - coder543 4y ago
    > To unencrypt the full vault and re-encrypt it does take an amount of focused time. The entire vault should not be encrypted directly with the user's password. That would go against standard best practices. See this comment written hours before yours, right under the comment you replied to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34127993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34127993 There is no "big difference" here, and it could be done trivially during login. The fact that it would be done client side instead of server side is a very minor implementation detail.

vegardlarsen 4y ago

Mine seem to be set to 1 iteration, screenshot here: https://snabelen.no/@vegardlarsen/109575002998425618 https://snabelen.no/@vegardlarsen/109575002998425618 My account is very old, but this was hidden behind advanced settings. And I have used this account daily since I created it. Not having this increase from their end seems very unprofessional.

mattm 4y ago

Mine was also set to 5000

fluidcruft 4y ago

I have a really old account (pretty sure I started using it ~2010) and I use lastpass essentially daily. I've never looked at that setting and I see that mine is set to 100,100. So it's migrated sometime. But I do also have some vague memory of a lastpass incident years ago where there was a prompt that they wanted to re-encrypt everything preemptively.