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Throwing Light On Elcomsoft's Analysis of Smartphone Password Managers
An anonymous reader writes "Security firm Elcomsoft analyzed 17 iOS and BlackBerry password-keeping apps and found their actual security levels well below their claimed level of protection. With additional digging, however, Glenn Fleishman at TidBITS found that Elcomsoft's criticisms rely on physical access to the apps' data stores, and, for some of the more common apps, on the user employing a short (6 characters or fewer) or numeric password. In other words, there really isn't much risk here."
I just add my ss # and phone number and bam - secure unforgettable password!
Glenn Fleishman does understand that encrypted data should be safe even in the hands of the enemy? Also, totally didn't read that article.
This isn't one of the ones they tested, but does anyone know how safe KeePass is?
I use this on my desktop and Droid, which is pretty convenient since I can share the database file between them.
So, the summary links to a summary, which links to a PDF of another summary, which links to a PDF of the actual study. Did we forget how the web is supposed to work?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
The real question is this: why haven't you switched to Gamemaker yet? Are you perhaps missing some gigabits on your puter...?
It is pretty sad though how many of the apps don't encrypt the user data at all, or it's encrypted but the master password is stored in plaintext or is encrypted with a hard-coded key. Then there's many of them using strong crypto algs but not properly (e.g., what is the point of using PBKDF2 but with only 3 iterations?)
Physical access is 9 bajillion times easier when it comes to phones than it is with desktops. There is risk here. If you lose your phone, and someone can access the stores, then your'e effed.
Shedding Light, Casting Light, or Bringing to Light -- but Throwing Light on something? Is this a thing? I mean, you can Throw a Switch, but Light?
That said, unless you're encrypting the datastore
However, the risk is quite low even without considering the issue of short (six or fewer characters, including letters, numbers, and punctuation) or solely numeric passwords. For starters, access to the app’s data store is required — either via an iTunes backup or an iOS device containing the app and its data — and any iOS security controls must be bypassed first. The flaws that Elcomsoft has identified cannot be exploited (as far as is currently known) over the Internet, which further limits exposure.
I wouldn't be too concerned if this were desktop PCs, but these are devices you carry around with you and may leave laying somewhere while you go to the bathroom, or have stolen. You shouldn't keep all your important passwords as plain-text in your wallet or purse... A weak password store is not much better than this.
There's a much higher chance of physical access to a portable device, especially one you carry with you everywhere in public, than there is to the desktop PC. This is why physical access is less of a concern for PCs than having it remotely exploited: You don't drag it around in public.
Physical access to the device means game over unless the data-store is strongly encrypted. Data Extraction Devices Exist, and police have been using them without a warrant. To my knowledge these devices don't work on iPhones, yet, but anything in plain-text or enciphered weakly would still be a concern if physical access to the device is gained.
Having a password store with a weak password is a bit alarming. If you're going to have a central point of failure in your pocket, out on your desk, in your hand on a cab, then the security of that single point of failure is very important. I know an unscrupulous cab driver who gets $50 for handing your forgotten phones over to street thugs. They pay $75 if the device hasn't been locked. The thugs actually use Faraday cages to prevent remote wipes. The point is: They're already interested in your data. It's only a matter of time until they have tools to brute force your password stores, they may have them already. With a weak password that can be brute-forced in one or two days, this is an issue that would cause me concern. That is: I'd want a stronger password and a manager that requires re-auth after standby mode is entered -- Laymen, like my brother, actually think 4-6 character pass-code is adequate to protect their bank credentials.
IMHO, the fact that they allow such weak passwords for such an important single point of failure is a serious design flaw. If a weak password is used there should be some minimal end user education, perhaps via big splash screen saying: "Your Password is Very Weak -- Do Not Store Important Passwords in this Password Store"
hmm this is interesting but i found more about this at www.scimat.com everyone should check it out
Awww dude, put your name to it! There's so much that you said that's just right, and yet so much you said that's just asininely wrong.. but who wants to debate an AC?
All my silly passwords in a google docs file.
What do I care if someone gets into my pandora account?
Not for banking or anything related to money obviously.
I'm the maker of a password manager for non-mobile platforms and can't think of any technical reasons why a mobile app would be less secure, as long as you don't intentionally sacrifice security for performance. However, from my own surveys of my "competitors" on Linux, Windows, and OS X I can assure you that not half of the programs out there can keep the promises it makes.
One thing you might check out to evaluate such apps is whether the encryption method is made public and whether the author explains exactly which hashing and salting methods he uses. Of course, if you want to make sure you need the source code but it's a good rule of thumb. Just writing AES means nothing, it could be AES in ECB mode with weak password hashing and no salting. But to be honest, I've even seen apps that store the passwords XOR encoded in the prefs file, no kidding.
In fact, I find that the more bold the security claims, the worse the actual security. Have seen this several times now. Be especially wary if somebody claims "Security is our highest priority". It means in fact: "Our security is so bad, that fixing it should be our highest priority, but it is not. We asked the PR people to fix this instead."
Most people implementing software today have no clue about security and that includes people writing security products. It is really pathetic. I think the reason is people wanting to keep their jobs ("yes, we can do that") and management that has no clue at all that writing secure software is a specialty that needs 5-10 years of experience in addition to specific training and talent before you can build anything that begins to be secure.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
One problem I see with phone-based password managers without hardware assisted crypto is the huge difference between the CPU power on the phone and even a $3000 dedicated cracking box. One thing the PDF quantifies is the amount of CPU/GPU time it'll take to generate a key for test decryption. 1-Password (the tool I've got, but haven't started using yet due to paranoia :-) uses just a single round of MD5 to generate the key, so key generation is fast. So fast that the GPU rig can test all the passwords possible in a 12.2 character (95 possible chars) password in just a day. So, for a decently safe password, you need at least 13 chars, and that'll buy you 3 months of data protection. And, you'll have to type that on your phone every time you want to use the password manager.
It seems that password managers should use a lot more CPU in the generation of the key from the password, even to the point where the delay on the phone approaches one second after the password is typed. One of the password managers ("the best") uses 4000 rounds of PBKDF2-SHA1 and so even with the GPU the cracking system can only check 10.1 characters worth of passwords in a day. So, a 12 character password will give you ~9000 days of data protection (assuming I'm doing the math correctly :-).
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I purchased an iPad just after the 2 came out - I'm still wondering if that was a mistake. One of the main issues I am always wrestling with is how passwords for website access are handled, or not handled is more like. Safari doesn't have a protected username/password store capability (unless you consider AutoFill to be a nice secure way to store this info on a mobile device), and the third-party stuff like 1Password can't talk to Safari because of sandbox restrictions with iOS. Why is it that strong credentials security for accessing web-based information isn't a major component of mobile OS's? For me, it's now the main reason I don't get an iPhone and will likely turn my iPad into an expensive gaming pad for my grandson. (Yeah, I'm old - bring back Big Iron.)