Slashdot Mirror
Chrome's Insane Password Security Strategy
jones_supa writes "One day web developer Elliott Kember decided to switch from Safari to Chrome and in the process, discovered possibly a serious weakness with local password management in Chrome. The settings import tool forced the passwords to be always imported, which lead Kember to further investigate how the data can be accessed. For those who actually bother to look at the 'Saved passwords' page, it turns out that anyone with physical access can peek all the passwords in clear text very easily with a couple of mouse clicks. This spurred a lengthy discussion featuring Justin Schuh, the head of Chrome security, who says Kember is wrong and that this behavior of Chrome has been evaluated for years and is not going to change."
I know it has been discussed many times to password lock access to stored passwords, though because browsers are not user-specific, this has not been done.
Solution: If security is important to you, don't be lazy.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
How about the fact that Chrome can import passwords stored in Safari to begin with?
So Safari has some security issues as well. Where is the "master key" to export passwords?
I guess the underlying message is that if you leave a computer unattended the information is accessible to anyone. E-mail, passwords, documents, MP3s, etc.
This is a convenience feature and 99% rather have the convenience of a cached web passwords on their personal computer then worrying about something walking by.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
../../Set Masterpassword
face it : chrome sucks at security, but that's no big surprise.
Passwords have to be stored in a decryptable form, because the browser needs them decrypted to fill in the password fields or to respond to HTTP authentication responses. That means that any malware with access to the browser can get those passwords in decrypted form too. A master password doesn't help, the malware can just get the passwords after I've entered the master password to decrypt them for use (assuming it can't just get the master password when I enter it). The only thing encrypted password storage really protects against is someone with access to the physical storage media but not the running system, or essentially stolen mobile devices (phones or laptops). On those you probably shouldn't be storing passwords at all, because any reversible encryption is too easy to crack using off-line attacks with modern hardware.
It's similar to my objection to the old "don't write down your passwords" thing: the risk of a remote attack against easy-to-remember passwords is much higher than the risk of an attacker physically getting into the locked drawer of my desk in the locked area of the secured and patrolled building my office is in, and if the attacker has gotten into the locked drawer in my desk I've got much bigger security worries and the attacker has much juicier targets he can go after.
You can secure this in Firefox, there is no option to do so in Chrome.
I don't think people realize that
But to make it simple for you, a password can be encrypted with a public key, and then decrypted with Chrome's private key.
How do you intend to keep a local user from being able to extract the private key that Chrome is using? (Note that in your scenario, asymmetric key encryption is kind of pointless in the first place.)
See: why DRM doesn't work either.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Firefox has the option to protect saved passwords with a master passwords and if you already unlocked the password store, in order to read password from the GUI, you need to unlock it again
Exactly. Mozilla's email client Thunderbird also uses a Master Password to unlock the view-ability of the stored passwords.
For those who insist on saying that chrome's security method is good enough consider this: How many people use separate log-in's for the "Family" computer that stays on most of the time? Not very many I'd imagine, just too much trouble for most to deal with. This means that both other family members as well as house guests can casually access all those passwords in no time.
Even if you do use different log-ins consider this type of common scenario: Your son or daughter has a "friend" over and they are cruising the web on her account doing whatever. Say that they are reading some news item or article together when the daughter gets up to go the bathroom. Do you think for one second that she is going to lock the computer and force her friend to wait to finish what she is doing? No. Her "friend" will then be able to casually and quickly access all those passwords and type them into her iphone for safe keeping before your daughter gets back. She now pwns your daughters facebook account, bank account, cellphone account and who knows what else.
How can anyone with a straight face say that is an acceptable security method? The fact that my open source email client has an easily useable default master password system proves that it is something that chrome could easily implement as well, hell, just copy the open-source code from thunderbird if you need to...
To be quite frank; when I think of Google or Microsoft "my security" is not something I honestly expect from them, and this newest revelation just further confirms that perception.
Don't do this. It basically puts your passwords (their building blocks, really) in clear text in your command history. It's not any greater security than Chrome has when someone has physical access, and it is significantly less convenient.
This thread is a goldmine of security theatre. Any hiring personnel could probably also use this to weed out folks who dont actually understand security.