Ask Slashdot: Should You Use Password Managers?

New submitter informaticsDude writes: What do Slashdot users recommend regarding the use of password managers? The recent election underscored the hackability of many personal accounts. One solution is to use different passwords for every digital experience. But, of course, humans are lousy at remembering large numbers of large random strings. Another solution is to use a password manager. However, password managers have been hacked in the past, in which case you lose everything. How do Slashdot users balance the competing risks? What is a person to do?

Comments

Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Ian Betteridge's head just exploded.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[belthize]

Some day I hope to see a submission with the headline: "Is Ian Betteridge's Law of Headlines Real ?". Sure, it might break the universe, but it's a risk we should be willing to take in the pursuit of truth.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I use KeePass *without* the browser integration extension. I let my browser store passwords for unimportant things like forums but I always manually copy passwords from my KeePass database for things like email, shopping and banking sites.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Aighearach]

While I share the distrust of the browser storage, I also don't trust of the OS or gui system to protect the clipboard.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[ls671]

Should I trust my IP TV: Yes!

Just the thought of having all my passwords in a mildly obfuscated database laying around on digital media 24/24 might keep from sleeping. I guess it's OK for some passwords although, like: /.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to chime in on this.

Your computer isn't secure. It is accessible over internet.

The best password manager is an airgapped one, for example a notebook that you store next to the computer.
If someone gets access to the notebook then they have physical access to your computer so you are screwed anyway and if it is your home computer they also have physical access to your credit card and other neat stuff they may value more. Burglars typically don't care that much about your facebook login.

Any computer based password manager will have vulnerabilities, don't trust them if you don't keep them on an airgapped computer.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is no. It isn't a real law. And just because that headline follows the law, doesn't mean the law is universally true, and thus real. In this article we already have a counter-example, I'm sure there are more out there, but just one counter-example is all you need to prove the law isn't real.

Sorry to spoil your fun here, but I can't let humour get in the way of good pedantry.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[allo]

It still works, because for suggestive questions it is reversed.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. On Android I use a implementation of keepass that includes it's own "keyboard" which bypasses the system clipboard all together. I think the windows version does this out of the box and the linux version can be made to work with some tweaking.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[chispito]

Ian Betteridge's head just exploded.

I don't think he had advice columns in mind.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Does Ian Betteridge's Law Apply to Self-Referential Headlines? Watch Professors of Philosophy Duke It Out with Journalism Experts."

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[skidv]

In your post, I read an assumption that a physically secure password tracker implies secure passwords.

One advantage of password managers not captured with a physically secure password tracker is that you can employ more complex (including difficult to type?), changing passwords unique to each system. Some softare password managers do this for you automatically.

Physical security isn't the only attack vector on passwords.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[vtcodger]

Probably you shouldn't trust the OS or the window manager to protect anything. Not that they won't try. But if we have learned anything, it is that the population of vulnerabilities in virtually all software and hardware is very large. Fixing the known problems will take years. Fixing all the problems much longer. Moreover, "they" probably don't need to know our passwords. Any website viewed, or email opened, or application acquired and run can potentially download a nasty that will escalate its privileges and take over the computer. They don't need no steenking passwords to get at our treasures. Moreover, in the case of financial stuff, the bank or whatever itself can be hacked.

Really, there's literally no place to hide. We're all likely going to be hacked sooner or later. If we haven't been already.

Perhaps it's time to stop pretending that passwords, ACLs, user privileging etc can keep us all safe. They really can't. Instead, perhaps we should focus on balancing usability against opening our affairs to all in sundry, and in keeping stuff we don't want hacked (ballots for example) on paper or other non-digital media.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[fyngyrz]

> In your post, I read an assumption that a physically secure password tracker implies secure passwords.

It does. If you aren't using secure passwords, and anyone at all can get at your system, you have nothing. Doesn't matter how securely you keep the password "password." So strong passwords are inherent to the discussion.

Personally speaking, inasmuch as I would never keep my passwords on the system they are being used for or which has any kind of WAN access, and that I use strong passwords, "difficult to type" is also inherent. But it's a pretty lame consideration. If you're too lazy to type a difficult password, you're probably already insecure on levels that are utterly trivial to compromise.

There are other ultra-basic considerations as well: passwords need to be unique, they need to be unrelated to anything about you and yours and your employment and the task at hand, they need to be long, etc. Then there are other high end considerations, such as Faraday cages, true random number sources, encryption mechanisms, etc.

To really cover all the issues would take a long and very well-written book, and someone actually comprehending everything they read in it, and able to synthesize proper application of everything relevant therein. Which is why I said -- several times -- that consulting a professional is the way to go.

What I was trying to do is show how deep it is without actually going deep. On reflection, even that is kind of hopeless.

So again: consult professionals.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[DarkOx]

I think difficult to type is probably anti-security actually when it comes to password managers. It means almost certainly you going to be moving the plain text from your password manager to your clipboard which multiple processes have access to read.

Assuming Network app A has an RCE but is running unprivileged its not going to able to read memory of your Password Manager, or Network app B you are entering your password into. So if app A is pwned and app B has a different password app B is still secure. Unless app B's password ends up in the shared clipboard that app A can read.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Mouldy]

So much this.

I have an LG G4 phone which rather helpfully has a custom clipboard widget where it will keep the last 10 things you've copied in any easy recallable list. That's all well and good until you copy something that shouldn't be remembered.

In the case of keepass, I copy a password which gets added to the top of the clipboard list - then a few seconds later I see "****" has been added to the top of the list as keepass tries to blank out the clipboard. Looking at the clipboard widget, I can still see my previously copied password there - totally visible, in plain text & easy to paste again.

There is a clear operation that I can manually invoke to flush out everything in the clipboard - but relying on users to remember to do that is unreliable.

It's also worth noting that LG in their infinite wisdom, have bundled this clipboard widget in such a way that it is impossible to disable, or uninstall or even configure. I believe there is a way to get rid of it if you root your phone - but aside from any warranty implications, I'd imagine there are also some security considerations to be had when rooting your phone.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[ctilsie242]

Ages ago, there used to be a company that sold password managers, which were completely airgapped. If you wanted to add a PW, you used the device to toss it in. It also had good security -- more than "x" amount of wrong guessed PINs, the device fried itself.

I'd say there is a market for this still. Make an Android device with a low res camera, no antennas of any sort other than wireless charging.

Then, one can use the camera to scan in passwords from the PC, or just type them in directly on the device. For backups, the device can generate QR codes, which another device can scan off and save. The device can then be hardened from there on out (a TPM used for physical security, a glass case with metallic paint on the inside [1], that if broken would zero master keys, etc.). Of course, it would require the ROM be perfect the first time, as updates would be difficult, but done right, it would be a secure device overall.

[1]: The paint would be for RF insulation. Perhaps add mesh for a Faraday cage as well.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[twitnutttt]

Yes, and not only is the clipboard at risk, but the entire decrypted contents of your password manager are in RAM at some point.
If your platform isn't secure, your passwords aren't. PERIOD

BTW. Use full disk encryption. Practice safe computing. Hope you aren't targeted by a nation state.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[twitnutttt]

Yes. Very good context to add to the discussion.
Passwords are only one layer of the overall picture. Password managers are an excellent solution to operate securely *at that layer*.
But in the larger context, there are still huge vulnerabilities.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[fyngyrz]

I think difficult to type is probably anti-security actually when it comes to password managers. It means almost certainly you going to be moving the plain text from your password manager to your clipboard which multiple processes have access to read.

Not if you're maintaining your passwords in a notebook (which most people who don't want an additional computer on their desk should be doing if they want secure storage of multiple passwords in typical circumstances where the computer itself is the vector for all likely compromises) or if they're maintained on a non-network connected device, which is how I do it.

It's a given that "lazy practice" and "good password practice" are wholly incompatible with one another. As a corollary to this, your average person is unlikely to ever pursue good password practice. You can't help those who won't be, or can't be, helped.

But if you actually need good security, you (and anyone who depends on your management of data you have responsibility for) better make absolutely certain that "lazy practice" isn't a dominating characteristic.

Assuming Network app A has an RCE but is running unprivileged its not going to able to read memory of your Password Manager

Well, if it ever comes about that privilege escalation and MMU compromise and left-over uninitialized memory fragment reading and tapping interprocess comms such that access to your password manager "as you" are all impossible, sure. Would you gamble on that being the case? I sure wouldn't.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[darkmeridian]

Nah. If your computer is hacked and the apps are compromised, then there is no way for that to be safe. The bad guys can put in their own certificates, etc.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

So do you just keep your passwords written down on a piece of paper? If they are stored in any way on a computer, encrypted or not, at some point they have to be decrypted and stored in RAM, wherein they are just as vulnerable as anything you are concerned with.

KeePass only stores passwords in the clipboard for a limit time (30 seconds on my PC) before wiping it clean.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you use your passwords if you don't trust the OS with them at some point? They have to be input, whether manually or automatically and at that time it doesn't matter which method you used; the OS has them in memory.

I think it's time to take off the tinfoil hat. There is security and then there is paranoia.

Re: Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks ye know not what a faraday cage is.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[No Longer an AC]

This is exactly what I do and I backup the password database religiously.

One time the file became corrupt but due to my frequent backups I did not lose anything.

I used to keep passwords in my head which was absolutely insane and of course I re-used the same passwords on lots of different sites. One night a few years ago I read about a Yahoo security breach and so I changed my password. Unfortunately I was drinking and was foolishly confident that I would remember this password which I'm sure was a very good one because when I sobered up even I could not get back into my Yahoo account.

I think of it as KeepAss rather than KeePass though.

I think some people really don't care about password security much, especially not for something like their work accounts. Twice I have guessed a co-worker's password. The first time was when I had my first sysadmin job and I wanted to see if failed login attempts were logged anywhere. lol, the password was the same as the username. I really did not expect that and of course I had root privileges anyway, but geez. Okay, that was the '90s and she was not an IT person.

But it wasn't too long ago that I was screwing around at work and decided to make a few attempts at a fellow developer's password. I had sudo privileges anyway so I didn't need to do this to get into his account. I was just bored. And his password was his first name.

And another time I pointed out to one of my bosses that we had a whole bunch of accounts set up on customer machines that had never been logged into and thus still had the default password which everyone in the whole company (and any customer employee who ever had an account on that system) could figure out. Some of the accounts belonged to former employees who no longer worked for us. Not interested.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[twitnutttt]

Small plug for PasswordSafe on this point... they include a keyboard that allows you to avoid putting the password ever on the clipboard for this reason.

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a device I'd want that I never thought would be usable as a password manager : pocket computer with keyboard, like those of the 80s and early 90s.

One example would be the Amstrad NC200, which had a particular generous 16 character line display (while NC100 is about the same with 8 lines). Or Psion organizers. I'm not really willing to buy or use an old one, these computers fairly sucked for a few reasons : battery backed RAM as storage (eventually wiped out, and you'll need to buy a backup battery again), need for a special serial cable or general lack of means to get the data out, no external storage or inconvenient external storage (battery-backed SRAM memory card, interface to cassette tape or reel to reel audio recorder or special floppy drive etc.)

A month battery life on a couple AA or AAA cells? I'll take that, though! What if it had some non-volatile memory like MRAM, even e.g. 8MB : actually generous to store a lot of text notes and such. Bring back the unlit monochrome LCD. Back to low power, instant on/off without risking random data loss this time. Micro-USB port to interface to a PC, possibly power input (you may epoxy this for tinfoil hattery). Micro SD slot (maybe. Writing flash would be power hungry.).

Re:Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Assume your password manager _will_ be hacked.

2. Therefore, don't pout the actual password in the manager, just put in a mnemonic short version for you (such as ^1 means shift 1-2-3-4) or write the passwords in there backwards. It's still useful to you but useless to anyone who hacks you.

Re: Should You Use Password Managers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Radio Shack Model 100 - www.club100.org

keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

http://keepass.info/

Re:keepass

[sexconker]

I also vote for KeePass. It's very nice and very extensible.

Re:keepass

[sehlat]

I use Keepass on my desktop(s) and Keepass Touch on my iPhone, since I can securely upload the desktop databases to the phone.

Re:keepass

[war4peace]

KeepAss keeps your ass secure.

Re:KeePass

[Anonymous Coward]

"i dont trust the cloud, but use the cloud"

k

Re:keepass

[fredrated]

That was my thought exactly!

Re:keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

Likewise, you can use KeepassX on macOS, and Keepass Droid on Android devices.

Re:KeePass

[PsychoSlashDot]

"i dont trust the cloud, but use the cloud"

k

You're either being deliberately ignorant, or the point hasn't been made clear to you. I'll try to help.

With cloud-based password managers, your data is at risk. If they are hacked - and because they are online, they are vulnerable to attacks - your data is compromised unless it is always encrypted. In essence, you're trusting that they will never be hacked, and that if they are, they did best-practices to protect your data.

With Keepass, even if the cloud-storage you use is hacked, you know the data isn't accessible because it's strongly encrypted. Because you did it.

So yeah, the original comment makes perfect sense.

Re:KeePass

[skids]

Right, you don't know what's going on behind a UI and even if you analyse the program to find out, cloud services can change that behavior between updates.

Re:KeePass

[Anonymous Coward]

With cloud-based password managers, your data is at risk. If they are hacked - and because they are online, they are vulnerable to attacks - your data is compromised unless it is always encrypted.

Which cloud based password managers do not ensure the data is encrypted locally? My understanding of most cloud-based password managers is that they encrypt/decrypt client-side in the browser, and only the encrypted data is stored in the cloud. So that would be the same as in your example, and you're going to a lot of unnecessary effort.

Of course, you're trusting the client-side code to encrypt it etc. but that's no different to trusting client-side keepass.

Re:keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

Another vote for KeePass.

I keep the encrypted password database on WebDav accessible space provided by my email service so I can access it from my home (Slackware) or work (Win7) laptop as well as from my Phone (Android). For Android, I recommend the Keepass2Android app. It rocks.

The email service uses application-specific passwords for access to the file server, so it's straightforward if any of my devices becomes lost / compromised to remove access. On the phone I have disabled database caching so as to ensure that once access is revoked, it is really revoked.

I don't use any of the browser plugins. It's not a big deal to copy / paste or use the Autotype command for Username / Password entry.

Re: KeePass

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe to go one step further, embed the KeePass DB inside a jpg before storing on online storage.

Re:keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Keypass and Keypass offline on my Android, but I have noticed that since they updated the encryption system it breaks the files and none of the keypass android clones can open the database anymore. It seems that the encryption either alters the content of adds some tag to the file so that it is no longer a valid keypass archive.

Any suggestions?

Re:keepass

[PopeRatzo]

Have they finally made Keypass databases portable from Windows to macOS? Last time I tried, I couldn't import to macOS.

Re:keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it can be used on macOS, Windows, and Android. And probably others.

Re: keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 KeePass
Go read the docs on KeePass, the maintainers have done a good job.

Re: keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

I compile KeePassX on my machines for added certainty. I also like to sync my kdbx file across computers so I store it on my own Nextcloud server and have a separate kdbx file with accounts that I feel safe opening on other trusted machines that aren't mine using the KeeWeb plugin

Re:keepass

[PopeRatzo]

I know the program can be used on macOS, but can a password database created on a Windows PC be used on macOS?

Re:keepass

[gonk]

Of course. Why couldn't it be?

Re:keepass

[Gaygirlie]

I vote for Keepass, too. It's great for what it is. I also have a system set up to sync the Keepass-database between my devices and to keep backups of the database, so that if the database got corrupted, I could revert to an earlier backup. This way I always have a working copy somewhere.

Re:KeePass

[Zaelath]

Of course, you're trusting the client-side code to encrypt it etc. but that's no different to trusting client-side keepass.

Yes it is, quite different, think about it again in terms of trust.

Re:KeePass

[golgotha007]

>>You're either being deliberately ignorant, or the point hasn't been made clear to you. I'll try to help.

Here, let me help you.

"Cloud based" password managers (like LastPass) use client side encryption, so even if they get hacked, your passwords are still safe.

Here's the right way to do it. Use a password manager like LastPass, couple that with physical 2FA yubikey and require that both master password and yubikey be present everytime you unlock your computer.

Re:keepass

[kav2k]

They updated the system, but it should not come in effect for existing databases unless you specifically change it yourself.

As for Android clients that can work with new encryption, check out Keepass2Android beta version.

Re:keepass

[kav2k]

Actually scratch that, the release version already contains the support for KDBX 4 / ChaCha20 / Argon2.

Re:keepass

[Hognoxious]

Different line terminators.

Stranger things have happened.

Re:keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes

Re:keepass

[fgouget]

Likewise, you can use KeepassX on macOS, and Keepass Droid on Android devices.

I tested KeePassX for all of 20 minutes but quickly ran away when I discovered they did not even know how to generate proper random passwords! (interestingly this bug now has a virus attached to it!) After find such an obvious bug I just couldn't trust the rest of the code base. Plus it took them 4 years to fix that security bug which denotes a clear lack of concern about security. And the "fix" was "let's remove the feature". Four years to just remove the feature! Given that KeePassX is a port of KeePass I cannot recommend it either.

Re:keepass

[PopeRatzo]

As of one year ago, keepass could only work on macOS in an emulator, and the password database was not portable from Windows. My question was about whether that has changed.

Re:KeePass

[FictionPimp]

That's how I do do it. I trust my password manager to encrypt the passwords client side, but I enforce MFA on both the password manager and every site that allows it. I also rotate my passwords on a regular basis (all of them randomly generated).

Re:keepass

[TVmisGuided]

KeePass, or any other offline password manager, is a good first step. I really shouldn't need to go into the inherent issues with using an online password management system. However, to improve the security of the database, go with two-factor authentication by adding plugins such as OtpKeyProv and configuring KeePass to use it in conjunction with a Yubikey token.

(Disclaimer: I am not associated with either the OtpKeyProv developer or with Yubico. I use them as examples based on past successes.)

Re:keepass

[erapert]

Requires .NET 2.0+ (i.e. Microsoft).
Thanks but no thanks.

Re:keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing your tendencies, I'd think you'd prefer something called PeePass. Oh and by the way why do you keep posting the same old busted tired-out forced memes from Last Thursday? We all know it's you, and it's LAME.

Re:KeePass

[Anonymous Coward]

But you are keeping the key file in the cloud too. That's braindead. The key file should ideally be stored on a separate device to the password store. You may decide that to store it on the same device for convience but that kind of defeats the point of having a keyfile. Most importantly, a key file should never even be transmitted over the internet, let alone stored in the cloud.

Re:keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

KeepassX, which was originally a translation of KeePass to linux, is now it's own independent project and runs on Windows, Linux or MacOS.

I've had it open Keepass databases created on Windows on the Mac and Linux without issue.

Re:keepass

[PopeRatzo]

Ah, thank you. That's what I was looking for.

Re:KeePass

[MikeBabcock]

Only if the encryption routines in the software are securely implemented and only if there isn't an error in the libraries they linked to and only if and only if ... encryption code isn't cut and paste easy. Its a complex concept.

Re:keepass

[Jesus_666]

The KeePass database format is documented and a de-facto standard. There are independent implementations for non-Windows platforms such as KeePassX. The KeePass download page links to a whole bunch of them.

Re:keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

Never seen a virus attached to a bug. What are you talking about?

Re:KeePass

[Anonymous Coward]

Behind the UI of KeePass? All that is going on there is the requested "encrypt this file with the keyphrase and/or keyfile, using the proscribed iterations of the algorithm of choice." Nothing else happens there. It isn't a system like LastPass, there is no cloud service pushing software updates; you don't trust the unaudited code, don't compile and run it.

The cloud server storing a KeePass database? I get to pick which one I want, but it doesn't really matter much. It's already encrypted. The most they could do is try to compress it (laugh) or encrypt it again. Even if they were to fail open, and share my KeePass database with the world, it would take a provably long time to break keyphrase+method.

Re:keepass

[q4Fry]

As others have noted: "yes, it has changed."
https://github.com/mstarke/Mac...
https://github.com/keepassx/ke...

1Password

[DraKKon]

I have been using 1Password for the past few years and since I keep everything local to wither my Mac or iPhone (using WiFi to sync) the only way I'll get hacked is if the attacker is already in my local network and if that's the case I'm already screwed. The data files have a master password that I have to remember, but it's much easier to remember 1 password and not hundreds, especially when different email accounts are also used. Is there a 100% secure system out there for passwords? Yes, but I'm sure a photogenic memory is super uncommon. :)

Re:1Password

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yes, but I'm sure a photogenic memory is super uncommon.

But my god are they beautiful to look at.

Re:1Password

[Damouze]

Maybe he's Willy from the original V series. He also had a peculiar memory.

Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep my passwords in an encrypted file on an encrypted USB drive (with different passwords for both). The file never leaves the drive except for backups, which are also encrypted and stored securely.

I don't trust another company to not (ever) steal, sell, or just plain lose my information.

I also (as many do) tend to reuse passwords with minor variations. Most of my passwords (even in the file) are "shorthand" passwords that wouldn't work as listed in the document.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[slazzy]

That's good advice. Even if there is a company you could trust, you never know when they'll be bought out, or hire someone really bad and mess things up.

Re: Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

You had better use something in addition to that USB drive. One good static discharge and you're toast.

Use cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox and Keepass. It's encrypted, located locally and backed up to the cloud. Been working that way for years without any problems.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[dpidcoe]

I also (as many do) tend to reuse passwords with minor variations. Most of my passwords (even in the file) are "shorthand" passwords that wouldn't work as listed in the document.

I don't understand why more people don't do this. It's easy to come up with a suitably long and random base password that you can then add minor variations to based on some algorithm to make it unique per website or service. e.g. if P@ssword1 is your base password, your slashdot login might be sP@sslword1a (sticking the first three letters of the site into the beginning, middle, and end of the password). Assuming you use an actually random base password and do something a little more sophisticated to mask where you're getting the variance from (e.g. rotate the site initials based on the value of the first one) no one is going to be able to figure out your other passwords based on seeing just one or two in the event a database with your plaintext credentials gets pwned.

Obviously that's not the be-all end-all of password security and you'd want to use truly unique passwords for important stuff (bank, email, etc.), but it works great for the 100s of unimportant/semi-important passwords that you use on a semi-regular basis without putting all your eggs in one basket like with a password manager.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[skids]

Pick even just a short password, and a consistent non-obvious way to append other data about the account. Then cat | some hashing command, type your stuff and cut/paste. Save the relevant data about the account in a text file, but not in the same format you use to append to the password and with some extra cruft. Be sure to include a rough date so you know how stale a password is.

This avoids one compromised cleartext password giving clues about others, as long as you are not so p0wned as to have someone be able to see how you generate the hash or hijack your clipboard.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[mysidia]

why more people don't do this. It's easy to come up with a suitably long and random base password that you can then add minor variations to based on some algorithm to make it unique per website or service.

People DO do this. Research has shown that when implementing Password Expiration, in 80% of the time users created a new password which could be guessed by using a dictionary attack on the previous password and applying minor variations.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Jason Levine]

Which is one reason why expiring users passwords too often leads to insecure passwords. If your password is going to last for a year, you might use a 20 character string including various special characters and caps/lower case mixing. If your password needs to be changed every month, you'll get the PASSWORD1, PASSWORD2, PASSWORD3, etc. variations.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[jon3k]

I don't understand why more people don't do this

Because its unnecessary. I have a keepass database thats stored in a trucrypt volume on my PC. I randomly generate passwords that are 12+ characters using random numbers, letters, cases, etc. I also use keepass on my iPhone using a 6 digit pin + TouchID with MDM that allows remote wipe in the event its lost/stolen.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just use an app???
Yeah, your system seems equally as secure, but harder to use. You have to enter two different passwords and then navigate what, a text file, to copy and paste the info?
With PasswordSafe (open source by Bruce Schneier) I unlock once with my master password and then type the first few letters of the entry I want, and in a series of key combinations that I've done so many times they take me literally less than 2 seconds I can open the associated URL in my browser and copy/paste the username and password. And no, none of this involves having the browser remember anything.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[nasch]

One drawback is if a website has its database compromised or for some other reason you need or want to change your password. Do you use a different base password for that one site, or different rules for altering it? How do you remember which sites are still using the old way and which ones are on the new way? What if you have to change password X a second time, and now you have sites using three different algorithms or base passwords. It could pretty easily become a mess.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! 12 characters. That sounds super secure against hacks... if it were still 1993!

OK sorry for the snark, but seriously rainbow tables have you powned out to 16 characters easily nowadays.
From what I have read, 21-25 characters minimum is what you need to be doing now for security against brute force / dictionary attacks now that hackers are using cloud resources to attack them.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! 12 characters. That sounds super secure against hacks... if it were still 1993!

OK sorry for the snark, but seriously rainbow tables have you powned out to 16 characters easily nowadays.
From what I have read, 21-25 characters minimum is what you need to be doing now for security against brute force / dictionary attacks now that hackers are using cloud resources to attack them.

Dictionary attacks don't work at all for randomly generated passwords.
A rainbow table for a salted 12 character password based on a 80 character pool ( UC, LC, numbers, and symbols) would be about 2.5 yottabytes in size.
For non-salted (Microsoft LM), you're looking at like 100 exabytes.
A brute force attack for a 12 character (from 80 character pool) in a reasonable time would cost a few million dollars in CPU/electricity costs.

Re: Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Plus1Entropy]

Modern electronics have sufficient ESD protection that I wouldn't really worry about that. I'd be much more concerned about losing it.

Also, OP mentioned backups.

Re: Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Copy and paste? No. I know how to type. Any company can be bought, breached, or bribed. Let Truecrypt serve as a warning if you care about your data.

Re: Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

If you trust Google you're delusional.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is one reason why expiring users passwords too often leads to insecure passwords.

Or to be blunt, expiring user passwords at all leads to insecurity.

You "expire" passwords when there has been a security incident that possibly leaked passwords, and that's it. No routine password changes, all routine changes accomplish is to:
* force people to use short, easy to learn passwords - which also fall easily to brute force or table attacks
* make people use veryverylongpassword01, replaced by veryverylongpassword02 and so on. If "veryverylongpassword07" is compromised, anyone can guess what the next password in that chain is. Some people here use more complicated transforms, but the vast majority of people fall down on a simple counter. Remember, they don't have to crack YOUR password. If they crach the password of someone in accounting, they can enter fake bills into systems and transfer large amounts out of any corporation that use silly "password change" rules.

If you can have the same password for a decade, then chances are that even "ordinary people" with few computer skills can remember a very long and therefore secure passphrase.

And for those who want a little extra security, make sure there is some non-ascii unicode in your password. Existing bruteforcing & rainbow table techniques rely too much on ascii. They may evolve, but the search space gets so much bigger when you step outside ascii.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Geeky]

I used to use shorthand password that were reminders (first letter of one of a selection of base words, with a random five digit number at the end).

In the end it was the convenience of being able to copy and paste the full password that made me switch to storing the actual password. Especially on a phone, where typing a complex password is a pain.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[FictionPimp]

Not to mention that any website that is not locking your account out after multiple failed attempts (or at least notifying you) has a major security issue. I want my account locked and a email sent to me after 3 failed password attempts.

Re: Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

You miss the point on so many levels...

If you can type your passwords conveniently, they suck.

Yes, any code can be compromised. Including your beloved encryption app or even OS. So how is this relevant? NOTE: He was not advocating a passwords SERVICE, but an APP. No different than your text file plus encryption app solution in target profile.

Re:Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[twitnutttt]

This is interesting to me because of the addition of the hash process. Otherwise, since you must reasonably assume eventually some of your passwords will be compromised in plaintext, your homegrown password generation routine would be relatively trivial to solve for anyone targeting you individually.

Re: Encrypted File, Encrypted USB

[Anonymous Coward]

I "trust" Google in that I trust that they are unable to crack 256 bit AES in any reasonable amount of time*.

*As in before the sun expands and wipes out the inner solar system.

Standalone hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Non network connected pass
word manager with no RFconnectivity of any kind
job done

Re: Standalone hardware

[jep77]

This exactly. Taped to the bottom of my keyboard.

Re: Standalone hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Written in grease pencil all around the bezel of the monitor.

Keypass for me

[Snotnose]

Not web nor cloud based. You make a master password, it stores a file on your hard drive containing your encrypted stuff. You can move that file anywhere and, if keypass is installed, get your passwords on that platform.

KeePass

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't trust cloud-based password managers. Use KeePass and encrypt your keyfile with a really strong password. If you want to access your keyfile from multiple devices, sync it to the cloud with box/dropbox/gdrive/etc. Even if the keyfile is stolen, it'd be very difficult to compromise if you use a strong password.

There's several options.

[tlambert]

There's several options.

(1) Don't use a lot of password protected services; that way: less to remember.

(2) Live with being occasionally hacked.

(3) The Bratva solution: someone hacks you, send someone to shoot them in the head.

I don't know about you, but I'm kind of partial to #1, with #3 being a close second. I don't particularly like #2.

Re:There's several options.

[war4peace]

With every fucking site on the Internet now requiring you to have an account to even take a look at stuff (MassDrop, looking at ya), #1 is a no-go.
#2 is actually a valid option if you split your accounts into 3 main types:

- accounts essential to my well-being (mail, bank, etc) which mandate complex, unique, memorized passwords + 2-step authentication;
- accounts which are important but not essential (e.g. Steam), which mandate unique passwords with 2-factor auth but can be kept in a password manager;
- finally, crap that nobody gives a fuck if hacked (e.g. Slashdot, niah niah). but seriously, "that odd forum which I had to make an account to ask an once-in-a-decade question and never visited again" fits the bill. Those can have relatively simple, non-unique passwords kept in Chrome's password list. So what if they get hacked?

Re:There's several options.

[arth1]

4: Use password recovery.
Most sites allow you to reset passwords through a link sent through e-mail. Note: This is also why you should never register at a site using an e-mail provider you can't trust. Else whoever controls your e-mail can also reset all your passwords.

5: Remember them.
Buy and read a book on mnemonics. It's not wizardry to remember a few dozen different long passwords.

Re:There's several options.

[rtb61]

I have a crap memory so I simply use an internal algorithm to generate a three word passphrase based upon the website I want to access. So say I wanted to access the Whitehouse website and they wanted user names and passwords, the one I would go with is bullshitnumber1 https://www.whitehouse.gov/(sh... that Trump is more honest than Obama but at least Trump doesn't pretend to be something he isn't), maybe perhaps a little more complicated than that but you get the idea. Sometimes more slack, sometimes more complex depending upon degree of fiscal risk and how often I will actually go there.

Passphrase are generally good enough generate a whole bunch of letters and of course you can sub numbers for letter but at least three words, no spaces and fill the space provided.

Re:There's several options.

[aaarrrgggh]

In terms of execution, I break your three categories into:
-Memorized passwords with hard-copy password in a book someplace
-OSX Keychain
-Passwords saved in browser.

The OSX keychain is the weakest link unfortunately, although it pretty much requires local access to defeat. I used a Yubikey for a while, but it was just too much of a pain for day-to-day use.

Ultimately, the weak link is my wife... who does not know how to secure all her passwords properly. When two different people need access to the same information security becomes an order of magnitude more difficult to achieve. I wish bank and brokerage accounts allowed one user "read only" access and the other the right to modify stuff.

Re:There's several options.

[Aighearach]

It only seems like every fucking site on the internet because you cough up what they want every time.

There is a huge information glut. There is more content, I promise you. If you say no to the crap, you end up with better stuff.

Re:There's several options.

[war4peace]

Maybe, if all you do is consume the information.
If you participate, then there's no way around it.

There's some light at the end of the tunnel, though. More and more websites now allow you to log in using your Google account or Facebook. SSO solutions greatly reduce the amount of username/password combinations you have to remember. On the other hand, it makes it mandatory for you to have a Google or Facebook account, but since they are free to create, you can use them only as a gateway and have no important information residing there.

Re:There's several options.

[RatPh!nk]

This has been my philosophy since the early 2000s. I have essentially a junk gmail account for low priority junk authentication systems. semi important (base with permutations of a 10-15 char password, mixed case, symbols etc..) and super important (2 step auth, password manager 30 char random etc..)

Re:There's several options.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a Kickstarter campaign, to fund a company for #3? I'd support such a valuable service....

Ha-Ha Only Serious here... It may really be the only way to discourage hacking / identity theft....

Use a password manager, don't store online

[slazzy]

Use a password manager = yes. Storing passwords online = no. If you must store in the cloud, use different providers for the encryption as the storage.

Re:Use a password manager, don't store online

[robmv]

+1. Second advice: don't use password managers with custom formats or custom encryption. My recommendation is Pass, with simple GPG encrypted files. Add the GUI of your choice over it.

Re:Use a password manager, don't store online

[Anonymous Coward]

I stored my passwords encrypted online. Then I forgot my password.

Re:Use a password manager, don't store online

[houghi]

Not an option for me as I often am on computers where I am unable to install anything, like on this one. Obviously I do not use them for banking things and the like.

So I have several layers of passwords going down in security level:
1) My home network
2) My email
3) My banking
4) My Online store
5) My bullshit /. is 5. I also have my own domain so I use aliases to see where things come from. e.g. shlasddot.org@example.com for here and companyname.TLD@example.com. That way I now if it is really from e.g. the bank or if it is somebody who is fishing. I will also see if they are selling my email address (and the reason I don't use eBay anymore)
So if a mail comes from example.net and it was not send to example.net@example.com, I know there is an issue.
1) It is spam and the from address is fake.
2) They have sold the address. I will stop using that service
3) They have been compromised. Action will depend on the situation.

1 happens all the time. Standard spam. Not an issue.
2 happened once with eBay. Probably forgot to unselect an option after I logged in, or something sneaky like that. Legal, but still: fuck-em for being sneaky.
3 has not yet happened

So no, for me a password manager is not an option, because I might suddenly need it when all my devices are unavailable. e.g. transferring money when I am in another country and my phone stops working.

Re:Use a password manager, don't store online

[Anonymous Coward]

A portable password manager like LazLock https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazlock/ on a USB stick offers some flexibility, and a strong random password generator.

Re:Use a password manager, don't store online

[Anonymous Coward]

I use pass myself, but I wouldn't recommend it to other people as it has some pretty serious security drawbacks. As each account password is stored as a separate file, all it takes is a directory listing to see every account I have. Sure, the CIA might not be able to crack the passwords, but unless I obfuscate the site names (which... is a stupid and doesn't work), my partner could easily check if I have an Ashley Martin account, or my Mom could check if I have a pornhub account

It's the only password system that required physical security to prevent leaking information. I like it for other reasons, so the trade off is worth it for me, but like I said I wouldn't recommend it for most people.

Use a Local Not a Remot Passwords Manager

[DERoss]

Some password managers rely on remote servers or the cloud to store your password. That is risky for two reasons. (1) A service holding passwords for many users is a more likely target for hackers than your own individual computer. (2) If the server or cloud service goes down even temporarily, you are stuck without your passwords.

You should choose a password manager application that is installed within your computer and does not rely on you having an Internet connection. The application should use a master password -- actually a master pass-phrase -- to encrypt the individual passwords. That master pass-phrase itself is not stored anywhere. Instead, if it is entered incorrectly, it fails to decrypt any passwords. By "pass-phrase", I mean a longer expression containing blanks, punctuation, etc.

Note that Mozilla-based applications have internal password managers that reflect my second paragraph above.

Re:Use a Local Not a Remot Passwords Manager

[twistedcubic]

In which case you should just write them on index cards and put them in your desk at home, which is what I do. No need to have passwords stored on an internet-connected computer, encrypted or otherwise. If I'm away from home, then I can only use the passwords I memorized. If I go on vacation I write some of them in a encrypted file on a USB key, and then shred the file later.

Re:Use a Local Not a Remot Passwords Manager

[nasch]

(2) If the server or cloud service goes down even temporarily, you are stuck without your passwords.

I think LastPass will still work if the server goes down, you just can't sync your vault; perhaps others work that way too. At the least, a service could be designed that way even if LP isn't.

Re:Use a Local Not a Remot Passwords Manager

[kevmeister]

LastPass encrypts the passwords using a local master password with AES. The encrypted passwords are stored both locally and in the cloud. If the network is down, your passwords are available from the local copy, but, since you might have updated the data from another system, it will always attempt to update the data from the cloud nd fall back to local. The master password never leaves your system and unencrypted passwords don't either.

Plus, it runs on most everything; Linux/Unix, Windows, Mac, Android, iOS. It's a bit clunky in how it does passwords for apps on iOS, but works well with Android apps. I use in on FreeBSD, Android, Linux, and Windows.

Re:Use a Local Not a Remot Passwords Manager

[apoc.famine]

The problem with this is if you're traveling and your stuff gets stolen, or your house burns down. How do you log in then? If your passwords are stored using a service that uses insecure cloud storage, you can at least borrow a computer from someone, install your software, and recover access to your accounts. If it's local software on your computer and phone, you're shit out of luck until you can access your backups.

Re:Use a Local Not a Remot Passwords Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you memorize passwords that are 20 characters long and change every couple of months? If your passwords aren't that strong, you're going to lose an account to a hack eventually.

Re:Use a Local Not a Remot Passwords Manager

[twistedcubic]

I just memorize them naturally after repeatedly reading them on the index cards in my desk. You can't memorize if you don't try.

Pass

[Anonymous Coward]

I like one called Pass (https://www.passwordstore.org/). It's dead simple; each password lives inside a GPG encrypted file and it's a command line tool, so it's great for dealing with remote machines, ssh, etc. It may not be as convenient as the ones that offer online/"cloud" options/browser extensions/etc but the inconvenience is balanced by the added security. Not for everyone, but I think many Slashdot readers would find it handy.

Pick a patrern for your passwords

[future assassin]

say like the sites name and select the letters and add in numbers. I use a couple different patterns depending on the type of site. That way I can remember 10's of passwords. 99% of the time it ends up no where near a dictionary word and they are all 8+ characters long.

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[SumDog]

I too use a password algorithm. You don't want to use letters in the site itself. You want to transform them so it's difficult to figure out the algorithm by looking at the passwords. Ideally someone would need to steal a bunch (like 8 or more) of your passwords and then spend a lot of time trying to reverse engineer them.

You can still use a password manager, just don't store the password. Store the algorithm ("First Algorithm" .. "2015 Version" "Blue Algorithm" ... just make sure the name does NOT relate to the output of the algorithm in any way).

I wrote a thing on this a few years back:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/my-accounts-been-hacked-no-it-hasnt/

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[Anonymous Coward]

say like the sites name and select the letters and add in numbers. I use a couple different patterns depending on the type of site. That way I can remember 10's of passwords. 99% of the time it ends up no where near a dictionary word and they are all 8+ characters long.

Similar. Its actually a two patterns mixed together via a third. I can generally recall on the first try for often used passwords, and within 3 for less often used.

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[Aero77]

I used that technique until someone used my password from SiteA to guess my password for SiteB. Sorry, this isn't a clever solution

Re: Pick a patrern for your passwords

[Anonymous Coward]

Works great until the site is breached, then you have to change the pw. And then your pattern wont line up. No big deal if its inly one site , but after a bunch it becomes a problem.

Then you've got the sites that require a change every month and the sute that rejects your pattern solution for whatever reason. And you end up with so many pattern exceptions that you now need a passwors manager to remember them all...

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[Anonymous Coward]

fwiw, password managers can also store other bits of personal information. When given challenge questions, can you really remember all the lies you told?

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[l810c]

Yep, this is it. I have 12-14 character passwords that are all highly secure with numbers, capitals and shift characters, different for every site, that I can just type off the top of my head.

Just need a pattern or algorithm. I use pattern, date shift, keyboard slide(i.e. w=q, q=p), shift.

I've used this for the past 17 years and never needed a password manager.

The only time I have issues is with a very few sites that do not allow shift characters(!@#$%^&*()).

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[twitnutttt]

99% of the time it ends up no where near a dictionary word and they are all 8+ characters long.

And they're all a fucking joke to crack in 3 seconds!
Seriously, the comments of people here who have these complex schemes but don't understand their "genius" password is going to be cracked by a rainbow table, not brute force.
You need to just use a combination of diceware passphrases (truly long enough to avoid guessing, we're talking 30+ characters here) to unlock a trusted, non-service-based password manager app that generates unique and ridiculously long and impossible to even want to try to remember passwords.
So much simpler than your mental gymnastics and ACTUALLY SECURE.

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[twitnutttt]

See above comment.
You have a totally solid ILLUSION of security going here. ;-)

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[chipschap]

I discovered org-passwords which works with GPG and emacs org-mode. Of course it means you need your computer, not much use when you're away with no laptop and using public terminals or the like --- but you shouldn't be doing anything critical from such locations anyhow.

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[gravewax]

no that just means your algorithm and rules were too easy to predict. a single or even multiple site passwords if you are smart about it should not provide anywhere near enough information to predict another site. It is very easy to remember a lot of simple rules that can create complex and relatively unpredictable passwords (unless they have access to a great many of your passwords.)

Re: Pick a patrern for your passwords

[Anonymous Coward]

not a problem at all, alternate transforms are not difficult to create. Solved that problem long ago when Adobe and various other sites were hacked. I simple add some salt to my algorithm and it produces a completely different result.

Re:Pick a patrern for your passwords

[MobyDisk]

The primary benefit a system like this is to defend against a hacker who downloads bulk credentials from a hack, then uses those same credentials on another site. This is how most hacks are done. Even a single character difference defends you in this case. But in your example, you were attacked by an individual who was targeting you. In that case, you need to use a smarter pattern. But most hacks aren't like that.

Re:Dont use lastpass

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is lastpass a piece of crap, exactly?

No, never give your passwords to one of those

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have very few passwords, don't sign up for accounts for anything completely necessary.
You should be able to remember several complex passwords for the few accounts you create.
Never-ever trust those password services.

Re:No, never give your passwords to one of those

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for telling me that I shouldn't have to sign up to access every stupid damn site out there to even read anything. Now get the sites to go along with it!

I have 1,200+ passwords in my password safe going back 15 years. I can't remember them, even though they are so "few."

Re: No, never give your passwords to one of those

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap! 1200?

Re:Dont use lastpass

[mattyj]

+1 for 1Password.

I don't have strong enough words to endorse their Watchtower service, which tracks recent breaches, affected sites, and warns you about it so you can change your passwords on affected sites. It also reports about duplicate passwords used multiple places, last time they were changed, etc. That functionality of 1Password alone is worth the cost, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of passwords.

You can store your key database in multiple different places, you just have to choose the one you think is most secure. :)

Hide it in plain sight.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

That is what I do. Whenever I create an account I enter the password as the user name and my username as the password. I am so clever.

Re:Hide it in plain sight.

[higuita]

So your password is 140Mandak262Jamuna ... now i just need to find your username!!

Re: Hide it in plain sight.

[Anonymous Coward]

you practically have to now days with lots of users.

Re:Hide it in plain sight.

[SillyBrit]

I tried that, but 'password1234' wasn't accepted as a valid email address :-/

Re:Dont use lastpass

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

Hey, that's my Password (1Password) it satisifes all the usual criteria uper/ lowercase letters, including a # and length => 8 char.

(j/k of course)

large random strings?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that makes a good password, you're doing it wrong.

While I use a password manager, password safe, it's offline and it's primarily only a vault and backup as I remember nearly all of the 100s of unique passwords I have to use. I don't share a single password with any platform, site, service, etc.

Re:large random strings?

[toonces33]

I also use password safe. And I use it with a Yubikey for 2FA. Works both with my phone and my PC.

Re:large random strings?

[twitnutttt]

Finally! Other people doing security right!

I have 1,200+ passwords in PasswordSafe. Each one is generally 25 (for the oldest) or more characters randomly generated by password safe itself. URL is stored for each one so that with three hotkeys, I have opened the website and pasted the username and password in under 2 seconds.
The passwordsafe itself is secured with a 6-7 word diceware passphrase.
Can be synced to my android device which has a password safe port, including a keyboard integration that keeps the password off the clipboard memory.

I am shocked by the number of slashdot users who think an 8, 12, or 16 character random password or one they permuted off a common root structure is secure.

Bush league pscyche out shit, man. Hah! Laughable!

Re:large random strings?

[Anonymous Coward]

16 character random password.. lets assume we only use A-Z, a-z, 0-9. That's 62 possible characters.

62 ** 16 = 47672401706823533450263330816
Say we can test 3 billion permutations per second.
62**16 / (3000000000 * 60*60*24*365.) = 503893980496.6127
It would take 500 billion years to try them all.

Maybe, we can test 1 billion per second, in 1024 parallel threads on a GPU. And we have a 1000 GPU farm..
62**16 / (1000000000 * 60*60*24*365 * 1024 * 1000.)
1476251.89598617
Still takes us 1.5 million years to test them all..

You sure 16 chars isn't enough?

Re:large random strings?

[twitnutttt]

Not random... permuted off a common root structure.
I should have been clearer, meaning these schemes "look" random at a glance.

Lotta dumbasses on here

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hate for cloud storage? Lastpass encrypts your passwords with your own key, that you select, and this has been proven as they released the source of their client.

Re:Lotta dumbasses on here

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloud storage- the choice of fools.

Re:Lotta dumbasses on here

[crashumbc]

yes AC we believe you!...

Re:Lotta dumbasses on here

[skids]

they released the source of their client.

...until they change the source.

Re: Lotta dumbasses on here

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, that's fair and if they do then I will change. But they haven't and it's easily proven that my key encrypts my stored passwords.

Use firefox master password with mozilla sync

[Vairon]

Yes. I recommend Firefox's password manager which can encrypt passwords stored in your browser with a master password. Then add to that Mozilla's sync feature to store an encrypted copy of your passwords on Mozilla's server. They are stored encrypted and cannot be recovered without the sync password and e-mail access. If you don't trust Mozilla's server, despite the passwords being encrypted, they provide the open source software so you can run your own server to sync your encrypted passwords to.

If someone (you or hacker) does not know the sync password and resets the password with access to your e-mail account, it will not give them access to the passwords that were sync'd previously. This is good because it keeps a hacker from being able to just hack your e-mail account then use that to get access to all your passwords.

Re:Use firefox master password with mozilla sync

[l20502]

Still inferior to the previous sync version, which also required a separate encryption key

KeePass + Syncthing here

[Piranhaa]

The issues with KeePass generally is synchronization of your password database. You can put it into a USB stick and it gets out of sync, or you can put it up in the cloud, but then it's sort of our of your control..

I use KeePass for my password database and then Syncthing to sync it on all my devices. It's light enough to work on a Raspberry Pi, so it's easy to setup a Syncthing cluster. Resilio (previously known as Bittorent Sync) works too, but I've never tried it personally.

The result is an Open Source password manager, with a database that's synchronized between all my devices and in my control.

Re:KeePass + Syncthing here

[David_Hart]

The issues with KeePass generally is synchronization of your password database. You can put it into a USB stick and it gets out of sync, or you can put it up in the cloud, but then it's sort of our of your control..

I use KeePass for my password database and then Syncthing to sync it on all my devices. It's light enough to work on a Raspberry Pi, so it's easy to setup a Syncthing cluster. Resilio (previously known as Bittorent Sync) works too, but I've never tried it personally.

The result is an Open Source password manager, with a database that's synchronized between all my devices and in my control.

I sync my KeePass to the cloud. But, I've also set it up with two-factor authentication. You need both the key file and the password. I place the key file on my portable devices using offline methods. So, even though the database is in the cloud, it's much more secure, in my opinion, than online key managers.

Re:KeePass + Syncthing here

[Anonymous Coward]

I do this too, except I have multiple dbs, some of which I do not sync. My financial pwds stay on my one clean wired (never wifi'd) desktop. Other dbs get sync'd via Syncthing.

keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

Works great and I don't have to care about some site out of my control getting hacked. I can get to it from phone or PC under a URL only I know on a server I own and I use a yubikey as part of a password to unlock it. Which is good enough for me.

Was the solution I went to after around 10 years ago I had some old registrar account I was no longer using hacked and around 1000 dollars in charges made on an expired card they had saved. That was a fairly minor inconvenience but was still enough of a pita that I'd never want to go through that or worse. Now every account is randomly generated password with maximum length they allow if it's under 32-64 characters. I'm experimenting with 2FA a bit, but right now it's more hassle than I want to accept in the case I lose my second factor.

Re:Dont use lastpass

[Anonymous Coward]

> Lastpass is a piece of crap.

And that's the end of the rant? Aww.

I continue to recommend Lastpass. 1Password (for 70$), not at all.

No Need

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in IT and have something like 30+ account passwords memorized. It's easier than you think. Use passphrases rather than passwords.

Example: Instead of something hideous like: !@#!Hncdj*lkkj

Use a passphrase made up of the first letter from a phrase, such as: MGai4meO... is "My Gmail account is for my eyes only" (the periods are simply extra fluff which add to the complexity

You could substitute the G for Y for Yahoo or anything else. If you have 2 Gmail accounts, use G2 to signify second account.

Re:No Need

[networkzombie]

Yeah, that's great. I'm in IT and my Keepass shows over one thousand entries. I use the mnemonic device method for most passwords, like (examples only) rfhpwtycg (really fucking hard password that you can't guess), or MvEmJsUn (mercury, venus, earth, etc...), oTtFfSsEnT (one, two, three, four, etc...). Using mnemonic devices helps me remember what the password is, but not where it was used. I have at least 10 gmail accounts, 20 other email accounts, and multiple accounts with Cisco, SonicWALL, Office 365, Barracuda, Hostgator, CloudFalare, AT&T, Verizon, 8x8, Register.com, etc, etc, etc... I would never even think about trying to memorize any password except the one that opens Keepass.

Re:No Need

[twitnutttt]

Use a passphrase made up of the first letter from a phrase, such as: MGai4meO... is "My Gmail account is for my eyes only" (the periods are simply extra fluff which add to the complexity

And congratulations, you high "complexity" 11 character password has just been solved by a rainbow table in less than 3 seconds.

Actually using the phrase instead you would have been literally a million times safer.

Re:No Need

[networkzombie]

Field input limitations make using phrases as passwords a limited option. Did you really crack "MGai4meO..." in less than 3 seconds? I suspect hyperbole. This is a frequently discussed topic. In my experience, when cracking, I must introduce character sets, depending upon language spoken / keyboard layout. "Horse battery yeah whatever" is already loaded as the ASCII character set (128 characters). Add in a few î‘€ symbols from the full ISO 8859-1 character set (try Japanese) and the software requires a bit more time because the full character set is larger than the ASCII character set (63 characters more?). Even hashes and ampersands required a tick box in Lopht to add as a character set. Alas, now we are back to Field Input limitations. If we could use Japanese characters with a 64 bit field length, well, that would make for some interesting passwords, if they were stored correctly.

Re:No Need

[networkzombie]

correction: 256 bit field lengths.

Re:No Need

[Anonymous Coward]

I think GP had it backwards. The phrase is incredibly fragile if (a somewhat long "if") anyone throws tables in that direction - hell it follows standard grammar. MGai4meO is technically eight characters and theoretically forcible, but in practice would be very strong.

Or it was until now anyway.

LastPass

[Mike Van Pelt]

I've been using LastPass for years. I tried pwsafe (nice, but at the time, didn't support Mac well) and KeePass (which I didn't like for reasons that I don't quite recall now; ended up moving back to pwsafe) before I switched to LastPass.

The deciding factors were (1) LastPass Premium works on Android. (And, now, you don't need Premium; the free version also works on Android.) (2) Syncs password changes across all devices, and (3) Professional Paranoid Steve Gibson gave it his seal of approval.

Some of the others also have a way to sync across all devices now, but I haven't come across any compelling reason to switch. Though LetMeIn may be working on that one.

Re: LastPass

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont like your post for reasons i cant recall

Re:LastPass

[Chewbacon]

It's worth adding that Last Pass information is decrypted on the device you're using it on and not on the server. Just pick a good password for the account.

Re:LastPass

[Anonymous Coward]

It supports two-factor auth as well...

Re:LastPass

[Anonymous Coward]

and use 2 factor auth. I believe LastPass is architected as securely as something like it can be, and they do use an architecture where they do not know your passwords. That's good, but your LastPass password is what decrypts that stuff, so use 2 factor auth for that. Always. They have lots of options, some of them are free.

For those who use local password managers--same stuff, and if they don't support 2FA then at least make sure they're stored on an encrypted drive.

Re:LastPass

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's worth adding that Last Pass information is decrypted on the device you're using it on and not on the server. Just pick a good password for the account.

people might not realise that this is irrelevant as regards the trust model: you still need to trust the source of lastpass itself or, its security model collapses.
Truth be told, you only need to do this once per device per upgrade (ie. typically early on) as opposed to each time you open the vault. But the threat is there.

Re:LastPass

[Anonymous Coward]

Sort of true, except that some Last Pass information is not encrypted (url field, maybe some others), even thou they say they encrypt everything.

Re:LastPass

[Anonymous Coward]

Or use the two-factor and a reasonable password?

Re:LastPass

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with LastPass is that it runs in the browser. You don't really want to be trusting the browser with your passwords. Better to have them in another application and only paste them into the browser when needed. At least that way if the browser is compromised at worst they will only get the sites you log into after infection, not access to the while database. Stuff like bank accounts and other non-web-related information in particular will not be compromised that way.

KeePass is better in every regard. Multiple client apps so you can pick the one that suits you. The official client is pretty good. Multiple free versions for Android and iOS. Cloud sync for free. Open source, well tested and examined for flaws.

Re:LastPass

[Anonymous Coward]

+add the 2-factor option, i.e. Yubikey.

Re:LastPass

[Anonymous Coward]

The greater the amount of security, the greater the friction. I can get my wife to use unique, complex passwords if she can let LastPass remember it for her. If I were to start a conversation "Ok, first, syncronize your KeePass with the one on dropbox, then type your master password, then find the website, and then"
She would interrupt me to say"Never mind, that's too complicated, and I just need to check the bank account. I'll reset the password, and I'll use my 'monkey123' password."

LastPass provides a high level of protection against common attack vectors while reducing the friction of using the solution to LESS THAN what it would be without using anything at all. The data are encrypted in the servers of LastPass, and only decrypted locally. It integrates seamlessly into Chrome, Firefox and Andriod. It synchronizes the passwords effortlessly, so whether I'm using my Linux desktop, my Android phone, my wife's Windows 10 Laptop, or my work PC, I don't have to remember to save the file back to dropbox, and resynchronize.

We Techies often forget that people are the weakest link in the security chain. Any real security solution has to, by definition, take the willingness of the people using them to be inconvenienced into account.

Re:LastPass

[Ksevio]

If your browser is compromised, then you have a compromised piece of software running on your computer so you might run into problems anyways.

Re:LastPass

[AmiMoJo]

With modern sandboxed browsers it is quite likely that the malware will be limited to the content of the tab it ran from. Even if it gets out of that into the browser's process, it will be running with low permissions and be sandboxed by the OS. To get access to another process' memory it would need to do privilege escalation on the OS too.

In comparison just compromising the browser will be enough to grab your entire LastPass database and encryption key.

Re:LastPass

[Ksevio]

Fortunately, LastPass prevents that.

Re:LastPass

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to argue keepass vs lastpass.
But the "You don't really want to be trusting the browser with your passwords." is a bit misleading.
Yes, the autofill has been exploited in the past, and while that has been patched I can still see why it's an issue.
However, there is still the option to have your password transferred to the clipboard (in chrome)
And Firefox uses a completely separate binary for lastpass.

Keepass or write them down

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, Keepass is my choice.

Another option is to write your passwords down. The chances of someone breaking into your home/office looking for your passwords are pretty low. Just don't do anything stupid like stick them up on the wall behind where you sit at your computer.

keepass with offline database file

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a program like Keepass and place the database file on a thumb drive that you keep offline. We were offered Keepass to use at work but they didn't require the offline database file - I did that myself to add an extra layer of security.

If you REALLY want security, commit all passwords to memory and of course use a different password for each login, changing them all on a monthly basis. I think if I did that I would spend all my time working on memorizing passwords and not get anything else done.

Re:keepass with offline database file

[Anonymous Coward]

bad advice.
it's been proven humans cannot remember unique, secure passwords.
if you really want security, don't try what you just said.

Better off with paper in wallet.

[RobRyland]

Just keep a tiny address book in your wallet.
Any important passwords you keep there.
The unimportant stuff can use a common password.

Re:Better off with paper in wallet.

[Required Snark]

I have a notebook next to my machine. It does not have a big label on the front saying PASSWORDS. It's one of the anonymous things piled on my desk. I should keep a copy somewhere else like my safe deposit box, but I don't. If someone with bad intent can get into my house there's not much I can do about it, so that's where I draw the line.

I know it's a low tech solution, but no amount of computer hacking on any machine will get all my passwords. Since I usually remember the passwords I use all the time it is reasonably convenient. I use long easy to remember passwords with lots of non-alphanumeric characters, so that gives reasonably uncrackable passwords. An example would be !non-alpha.Numeric!. That's nineteen characters and relatively easy to remember.

Pass

[duke_cheetah2003]

I like this solution, probably a little too un-'user friendly' for most though.

https://www.passwordstore.org/

Good use for an old PDA

[spiritplumber]

Good use for an old PDA from pre-wifi. Of course if it craps out you're in deep. So make that two old PDAs from pre-wifi. You can sync it with irda or serial, which has the advantage of only working when you want it to (if that).

Forget random passwords.

[Anonymous Coward]

humans are lousy at remembering large numbers of large random strings

Humans are also lousy at typing them.

Why do people still think passwords should be random?
If I can type a pass phrase that is 2-3X as long as a random password in half the time, which do you think is more secure? Which one doesn't get mistyped? Which is smarter? Which saves money in the long run?
1. I*g4fD@0Jqq7
or
2. Fuck y0ur stupid random passwords!

I can remember one of these and type it really quickly and accurately. Now if you are thinking that the 2nd will be cracked by a dictionary attack.. yeah, the only way that happens is if an account using it gets compromised and the phrase gets added to a dictionary... or if it gets mined out of this post and added to a dictionary.

As it is the financial impact of random passwords is a huge invisible loss to the world economy as time is wasted remembering and typing them, outages are extended, and brand damage occurs due to the first two issues..

Re: Forget random passwords.

[Anonymous Coward]

its not about random persay but adding in more character sets and length and can not be guessed. if there are backdoors 0days or mitm''s etc it does not matter as far as passwords go. of course there are extra things too like key files certs and 2 factor.

Re:Forget random passwords.

[Anonymous Coward]

correct horse battery staple
This is a four-letter password in a larger alphabet. It's more secure, but you're increasing recall complexity for rather linear gains.

superman
Time to crack: Milliseconds
Recallability: High

Superman1
Time to crack: Seconds
Recallability: Medium

Sup3rm@n1
Time to crack: Minutes, maybe
Recallability: Low

rrrybgdts
Time to crack: Years
The recall complexity had minimal increase because it's a nursery rhyme.

Passphrases are the only sane option, but don't put them in a "simple" form. Does your child like Bob the Builder and Spongebob? wliaputscwbi, not i$$@c2009.

Re:Forget random passwords.

[admiral snackbar]

I do sentences only for important passwords. Something like: When I went to bed I saw 7 little orange elephants! And I typically don't write those down, I just remember them (I just have 3 or 4 important passwords/phrases to remember, the rest is pretty much irrelevant) If I have to change the important passwords, I change the number in there. Of when I have 2 numbers in there, I change one up by 1 and the other down by one.

Re:Forget random passwords.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, everyone should have a garbage tier, a throwaway password. You don't give a fuck if someone gets the password to your spotflix account - until it matches your bank's.

Save hints

[Lije Baley]

For any normal person (not rich, famous, or powerful), just storing hints in a document is good enough. Something like:
EBay kxxxxbxxxx3xxx
Where the mask character x is not precisely replacing characters.
It's enough to remind me, but not enough to aid a casual attacker.

Re:Save hints

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are using native language phrases for your passwords (you apparently are since hints would not work if the hint was:"EBay kxxxxbxxxx3xxx" and your password was "kTb7A)|3-_" ) then you must dispute the consensus advice that passwords should be a string of RANDOM characters. Without a cogent justification of that deviation from that wisdom, the value of your opinion is negligible.

Re:Save hints

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops. I entered a string of 14 characters. The text editor displayed all 14, but when posted the special characters were deleted.

Re:Save hints

[Lije Baley]

Yes, I dispute the consensus advice, at least in the respect that I think that for "normal" people, the cures prescribed are worse than the disease. I would much rather face the risk of some damage occurring at some point rather than the certainty of damage every day from over-zealous security practices. Security fatigue is definitely setting in. I think that even business are starting to understand the cost-benefit analysis here. Perhaps security will move more towards an insurance model. Security is a hot profession now, but I suspect that will not continue indefinitely.
By the way, I don't presume much about the value of my opinions. You can take what you want from them.

"pass" (aka passwordstore.org)

[Average]

In as tech, Linux, and retro community as Slashdot, I give a particular shout to "pass" (passwordstore.org). Takes a little time to realize how simply powerful it is. And, it's literally nothing but GPG, Git, and a long but easy-to-read Bash script. Also, works really, really well for a team that needs a secrets vault. Back when we did that with KeePass, we'd always get out of sync. Now? It's a git-merge, just like the code.

Want more advanced security than that? My teams' GPG keys (and SSH keys for Git) are on a smartcards (Yubikeys to be specific) which means the actual private keys are never on our (day to day) computers.

In the broader sense of the question, yes, you should use a password manager. I have 300+ passwords (and password-like little bits of info). All different, all randomly generated. I never forget one. Not sure how you do that without a pw manager.

SuperGenPass

[kwerle]

https://chriszarate.github.io/...
SuperGenPass is a different kind of password solution. Instead of storing your passwords on your hard disk or online—where they are vulnerable to theft and data loss—SuperGenPass uses a hash algorithm to transform a master password into unique, complex passwords for the Web sites you visit.

SuperGenPass is a bookmarklet and runs right in your Web browser. It never stores or transmits your passwords, so it’s ideal for use on multiple and public computers. It’s also completely free and open-sourced on GitHub.

Re:Dont use lastpass

[SensitiveMale]

+1 for 1Password.

I would have said the same a month ago, but 1Password is changing their pricing to $36 a year subscription.

I'm switching to LastPass.

Reported vulnerabilities are fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

Update 2017-03-01: All reported vulnerabilities are fixed by the vendors: https://team-sik.org/trent_portfolio/password-manager-apps/

Re:Reported vulnerabilities are fixed

[KE6YDO]

The linked article informaticsDude refers to is sort of outdated for LastPass, as Anonymous Coward points out, the vulnerabilities in LastPass and others have been fixed as of 2017-03-01 as reported by Team[SIK] (https://team-sik.org/trent_portfolio/password-manager-apps/), so what's the problem now? I use LastPass.

Yes and no...

[bobbied]

I use a password manager that has Windows, Linux, Android and IOS clients. They all use the same encrypted data file that I keep on my dropbox.. I keep my day to day non-user critical account passwords in there so I can access them easily and quickly no matter where I find myself. But I don't put the important passwords (finical accounts and the like) in there, I just remember them.

But the PRIMARY thing you can do to keep yourself safe is to "DON'T use the same password on multiple sites!" Never, EVER use the same password in your "fun" accounts and your financial logins... This is because a breach at one of these "we don't care about your security" sites is a lot bigger risk than at your bank, but if you have the same password, you just gave the crooks a very important piece of information.

Secondary to that, is keeping passwords hard to guess. If you have a manager that generates passwords for you, use it for the throw away accounts.

So, in summary. Sure, use a password manager for the trivial junk accounts, use complex passwords and keep them different. But NO, don't put your important passwords in an online storage... Develop a way to remember them and Keep those in your head.

Re: Yes and no...

[Anonymous Coward]

So when you die, nobody from your family can ever get into important information?

For gosh sakes, use a strongly encrypted password storage tool, store ALL of your passwords, and let someone close to you know how to open the password storage in case you are ever incapacitated or dead.

With KeePass, you can print a hard copy and store it in a safe or safety deposit box if you wish.

But... make sure your loved ones can retrieve information that might be needed to help you if you are incapacitated or happen to die.

Re:Yes and no...

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. If you're routinely changing passwords, as the pros advise, then "keeping them in you head" is guaranteed to fail, especially if you are using a different one for all of your "critical" log-ons. Of course, it's similar to naming all of your lovers. If you've only had one or two, it's easy. If you have 10 and change them semi-annually, then good luck with that.

Re:Yes and no...

[Anonymous Coward]

Develop a way to remember them and Keep those in your head.

I developed a simple way. I call it Pencil & Paper. It is unhackable, though inconvenient.

simple unbreakable unique password for any site

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use a short word/number, like dog or d0g. Then add this before or after the name of the site.
For example, slashdotd0g or d0gslashdot.

This gives a unique password for every single site. You never have to write it down anywhere. You never have to think of a new password. Make an account on eBay? Your password is ebayd0g.

And no, if they get your password for one site, they won't have your password for every site. They don't work like that. You'd have to see several examples form different sites to work out the key was d0g.

Re:simple unbreakable unique password for any site

[skids]

While most sites will store crypts instead of cleartext passwords, you have no way of knowing which ones don't and those ones are likely more likely to be compromised. Cleartext can also be exposed easily by accident -- e.g. typing the password at a username prompt by accident, depending on how logging is configured on the service, or not caring to pay attention and do due diligence when ssh tells you a server key changed (really wish SSH would add a challenge response protocol, but it sadly puts 100% trust in the tunnel integrity with no plan B when used with passwords.)

So discernable patterns in cleartext is something you should only use on low-priority sites.

Hashing those patterns locally before using them can add enough security for most uses, though.

Haha, no

[DivineKnight]

Haha, no. For the same reason you don't keep all your valuables in one safe.

Re: Haha, no

[Anonymous Coward]

want some good eggs.

Re:Haha, no

[brantondaveperson]

I keep all my valuables in one house, is that bad too?

Re:Haha, no

[DivineKnight]

Depends. Tell me your address, and I'll check it our for you.

Should you drink water to stay alive?

[kangsterizer]

I mean, you can probably live without for a while...

Online Wallet Usage

[Anonymous Coward]

I always joke that you should write you passwords on a $100 bill. Then protect it like a $100 bill. It sounds like a joke but as you think about the expected value of a lost or disclosed password it is a really good fit.

  If you lose it will be spend like a $100 bill and no one will care about the numbers written on it.

Re:Online Wallet Usage

[Anonymous Coward]

underrated comment ^^

password safe

[djk1024]

I've been using password safe for over 10 years. It's works well for me, is free, was created by Bruce Schneier and keeps your passwords in a local encrypted file.

Re:password safe

[akita]

Thank god, reading the comments and not a single mention of pwsafe,

Re:password safe

[Jason Levine]

That's what I use too. There's even an Android version that I use with a copy of my PasswordSafe file stored in the cloud so I can get to my passwords on the go.

Re:password safe

[toonces33]

And both the Android and PC versions support YubiKey.

Re:password safe

[cjmnews]

Me too. There are Windows, IOS and Mac versions so I can use 1 passwordsafe database across all 6 devices that need it. I have my parents using it, as well as my in-laws.
Every site gets a random password that meets their criteria. Once you get used to not knowing your passwords, the stress goes away. Often used ones get memorized even if they are random.

Re:password safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, reading this thread has given me a wakeup call regarding the tech savvy of slashdot readers. I gave them too much credit apparently.

Use a manager, use 2fa

[WinstonWolfIT]

I use LastPass just fine, because every site where getting my login details would hurt, I use 2fa: Microsoft, my bank, PayPal, LastPass, Google, etc. Sure I'm picking up my phone once in a while but it's a good balance between secure and convenient. Far less secure are card details; mine got compromised recently but was detected and reversed almost immediately. Which is why I use PayPal whenever possible.

I do not.. come up with a good story scheme...

[gosand]

it's what I've used for years. I have a not so memorable story, take an event from that, and turn it into your password scheme.

[completely fabricated example]
In 7th grade a girl I liked (Sarah) gave a presentation on Abraham Lincoln. She was wearing a blue dress.
Four score and blue dress. FoScBlDr (8 characters, safe)
Add in a number and a symbol, because some sites require it. FoScBlDr81? [I think it was in 1981]

So, there is my starting password. Password hint = Sarah Lincoln 81, maybe SL81 for short.
6 months later, you have to change your password. Hint becomes SL82 (FoScBlDr82?)
You could cycle through to 89, then back to 81. Over time, you can morph it in other ways. Maybe put a $ in there instead of a ? for financial sites, or come up with a separate story for those.

The thing is, YOU make up the story and the cycling rules.
You can even write down your password hints, nobody would ever think "Crush 88" was actually "FoScBlDr88?"

I have used one scheme/password since 1999, and it has morphed so much even if I told someone my original password, they couldn't guess what it is now... it's just jibberish.

Re:I do not.. come up with a good story scheme...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your algorithm isn't too much different from mine. I just pad the password and move the phrase to the second part of the password, and the rest is the same idea.

Re:I do not.. come up with a good story scheme...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's what I've used for years. I have a not so memorable story, take an event from that, and turn it into your password scheme.

[completely fabricated example]
In 7th grade a girl I liked (Sarah) gave a presentation on Abraham Lincoln. She was wearing a blue dress.
Four score and blue dress. FoScBlDr (8 characters, safe)
Add in a number and a symbol, because some sites require it. FoScBlDr81? [I think it was in 1981]

So, there is my starting password. Password hint = Sarah Lincoln 81, maybe SL81 for short.
6 months later, you have to change your password. Hint becomes SL82 (FoScBlDr82?)
You could cycle through to 89, then back to 81. Over time, you can morph it in other ways. Maybe put a $ in there instead of a ? for financial sites, or come up with a separate story for those.

The thing is, YOU make up the story and the cycling rules.
You can even write down your password hints, nobody would ever think "Crush 88" was actually "FoScBlDr88?"

I have used one scheme/password since 1999, and it has morphed so much even if I told someone my original password, they couldn't guess what it is now... it's just jibberish.

This is pretty good, but it runs into the password re-use problem. Which is a real problem, because you don't have any say in how securely the password is stored in the service's database. If your yahoo password gets compromised, that's a real issue. But if your compromised yahoo password will also let people into your gmail and etrade accounts, it's a disaster.

I do something similar, but it makes a different password for every site. I made up an algorithm based on the name of the service, so I just have to remember my password formula and I get a unique password for every site. For example:

www.slashdot.org. Break it down by syllable it becomes "slash" and "dot". Put a special char after the syllables, so now we have "slash#dot#". Now use the letter one up on the keyboard, "woqwy#e9t#". Now stick a greater-than-4-digit number in the middle - "woqwy#46579e9t#". www.pandora.com becomes 0qh#46579e94q# Have 2-3 different numbers to stick in the middle, for forced password change policies (which are security theater if you have a good unique password). Several times a year I'll end up at a site I know I created an account at but haven't logged into in a really long time. I apply my formula and it's like magic; passwords I haven't had to remember in years work without drama.

It does follow a pattern, which means it's technically at risk to a creative cracker. That can't be avoided by anything except real randomness. But if you study the way password crackers go about things, it's secure enough. It's eye opening to watch those guys go about cracking a db of user accounts. They'll get about half of them in a minute. These are the "monkey123" and "passw0rd" people. Just common passwords in a straight up list to try. After an hour they'll be up to about 85%, these are the "cowboyFan1977" passwords. Very common patterns, [dictionaryword][dictionaryword][year], and the like. A week later they'll be up to 90%, catching some of the less used (but still used by lots of people) patterns, "1Fri3ndlyGhost!". The last 10% they'll never get, unless the database didn't randomly salt the hashes or something. You just need to be in that last 10% and it's as good as random.

Re:I do not.. come up with a good story scheme...

[Anonymous Coward]

Im sorry, this isnt a solution, this is another problem.

If it works for you...

Re:I do not.. come up with a good story scheme...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading everyone's "genius" ideas for generating 8 character random passwords, my forehead is really starting to hurt and my palm too.

FUCKING RAINBOW TABLES PEOPLE! You are already cracked despite your Rube Goldberg worthy password generation schemes!

Re:I do not.. come up with a good story scheme...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. Now one site gets hacked, and suddenly you're screwed because your password everywhere else is just a few bits of entropy away from one that got hacked. Not smart. Not smart at all.

Re:I do not.. come up with a good story scheme...

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it "In seventh grade..." or "In Seventh Grade..." or "In 7th Grade..." or "In Seventh Grade, ..." or ... ? Oh yeah, I'm definitely going to remember exactly what the punctuation and capitalization was. Riiight. My theory is as follows: First run a half-marathon. Instead of relaxing afterwards, go out drinking with your friends, once you've been up for at least 38 hours and have a blood alcohol of at least 0.08, enter your password. If you can't access/remember your password in that state (of altered consciousness) then your process is flawed. I'm sure I could (once upon a time) do that for two or maybe three, but for 5 or 10? No way.

Re:I do not.. come up with a good story scheme...

[gosand]

it's what I've used for years. I have a not so memorable story, take an event from that, and turn it into your password scheme.

[completely fabricated example]
In 7th grade a girl I liked (Sarah) gave a presentation on Abraham Lincoln. She was wearing a blue dress.
Four score and blue dress. FoScBlDr (8 characters, safe)
Add in a number and a symbol, because some sites require it. FoScBlDr81? [I think it was in 1981]

So, there is my starting password. Password hint = Sarah Lincoln 81, maybe SL81 for short.
6 months later, you have to change your password. Hint becomes SL82 (FoScBlDr82?)
You could cycle through to 89, then back to 81. Over time, you can morph it in other ways. Maybe put a $ in there instead of a ? for financial sites, or come up with a separate story for those.

The thing is, YOU make up the story and the cycling rules.
You can even write down your password hints, nobody would ever think "Crush 88" was actually "FoScBlDr88?"

I have used one scheme/password since 1999, and it has morphed so much even if I told someone my original password, they couldn't guess what it is now... it's just jibberish.

This is pretty good, but it runs into the password re-use problem. Which is a real problem, because you don't have any say in how securely the password is stored in the service's database. If your yahoo password gets compromised, that's a real issue. But if your compromised yahoo password will also let people into your gmail and etrade accounts, it's a disaster.

You are correct. I alluded to but didn't make it clear that I can use the same scheme, but different password, for different sites.
e.g. for one site it may be "99 Crush", which would be "?99FoScBlDr" (change the number, and move it and the ? to the front)
I just posted off the top of my head anyway, if you put a little thought into it, it becomes more secure. And using your example, if someone cracked my yahoo password and it was "FoScBlDr82?", how would they ever figure out that my gmail password is "FoScBlDr88?" ? OK, so maybe they could decide to increment the number and get lucky. What if I make my scheme to rotate the number and the letter before it? FoScBlDr81?, FoScBlDs82?, FoScBlDt83?, etc.

My point is that it can be obscure and memorable, but only to you. Unless you share your made up algorithm, or expose a simple pattern, which can't really be figured out unless someone gets multiple versions of the password. I am not saying it's perfect, but I think it is a good way to do it. It's worked for me anyway.

I still remember a password that an intern at my first company used. He gave it to me when he left in case I needed it. It was "CIrpotb,"
He liked Pearl Jam, and it was from a lyric in one of their popular songs.

Re:I do not.. come up with a good story scheme...

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, stop this shit. Stop advising people with shit generation schemes that are more complex than remembering the password itself. Use RANDOM passwords longer than 50 chars or max the passwordlength of the site your using. Generate a master password ( mine is 30+ chars ), write it down, remember it, eat the paper.

Hard copy

[Anonymous Coward]

Write everything down, lock in a safe. Unhackable.

Passwd managers are Great for 3 letter agencies

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the Post-It on Monitor, keyboard, desk, filing cabinet method here.

What's wrong with this?

[reboot246]

I just write the passwords on Post-It notes and stick them to the monitor. :)

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

My first IT teacher told me to make sure all my passwords are Secret. So, they are.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just write the passwords on Post-It notes and stick them to the monitor. :)

I know this was just a joke, but a good password written down is a zillion times better than a shitty password memorized. Just maybe stick the post-it in your wallet instead of under the keyboard.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

the NSA can see them on the reflections on your eyes :)

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're joking, but that's actually better than most password managers for many threat scenarios. Password managers are the #1 target of online hacking activities, whereas post-it notes require physical access. You could also put them into a safe or store them in your wallet. It depends on the threat. If you want to safeguard against untargeted mass surveillance and ordinary hackers, physically storing the passwords is safest (they need to be longer and more random than what any normal person can remember). If you want to safeguard against targeted surveillance by state actors, you're on the loosing end anyway. In most developed countries they will get access to your electronic devices, but you can store passwords in your wallet and attempt to physically secure your PC with tamper-proof seals that you check regularly, as well as use hidden surveillance cameras without any internet access. That will piss them off for sure. You should also enter important passphrases below a blanket or moskito net and need to check the physical safety of your electronic devices regularly before you switch them on, though. Generally, none of this is worth it for ordinary persons. If you want to safeguard against targeted attacks on your PC by individuals (hackers, criminals, wives), physically storing the most important passphrases is safest. And if you want to primarily safeguard against ordinary fishing attacks and online hacking, but not specifically tailored to your PC and your person, then a password manager might be safest. In any case, it's important to use a random passphrase generator.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually not a bad idea for a desktop. The problem is 99.99999% remote hackers*. If you are a target of someone willing to break into your home to get a password for an online account - well, you have bigger problems.

*Assumes the people you live with are not complete arseholes.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just write the passwords on Post-It notes and stick them to the monitor. :)

Huh. Thot you were one of the 4-digit uid's at first.

Keychain

[geoff_syndicate]

I use keychain and Safari's automatic password generator. It's extremely convenient and I'm surprised no one's mentioned it here. Serious question: are there any reasons why this isn't a good idea?

Re:Keychain

[skids]

The main drawback is it's in a place everyone who might want your password knows to look, and generic malware to sniff out your keychain password is more likely to be manufactured given how may passwords are at stake globally. Whether that's concerning to you depends on your personal security needs.

Don't use SaaS ones

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes; just don't use the SaaS based ones. Use keepass, pass, gpg, or openssl.

SaaS providers store your passwords centrally; you don't know if it's encrypted; and chances are it's not if they autopopulate password fields.

Not to mention if they get subpoena'd they have hand them over. They could have backdoors if they do encrypt.

Also, 1Password is complete garbage: https://myers.io/2015/10/22/1password-leaks-your-data/

Re: Dont use lastpass

[Anonymous Coward]

1Password is garbage https://myers.io/2015/10/22/1password-leaks-your-data/

By "Password Manager" do you mean..

[Anonymous Coward]

..my brain? Then yes.

Step 1) Threat Evaluation, Step 2) Pick Something

[Anonymous Coward]

As with all things security related, the first thing you have to do is decide what kind of threats you're really worried about. If you're doing anything that might make you the target of either state backed or other deep pocketed groups that are also technically sophisticated, that's very different than if you're just some person trying to keep their banking and credit card details private. A shorter way to think of that is: is there any reason anyone rich and smart might want to spear phish you? If yes, good luck and I probably can't help you. If no, keep it simple.

Personally, I have an encrypted text file on my encrypted local PCs that I back up to an encrypted HDD. When I need to create a new password for something, I open it up, enter my one main password that I don't write down and have never told to anyone, and then enter the new site, user, and PW info. I don't use the same passwords for any site, but I do let browsers remember passwords for non-critical things (Amazon, forums and tech support stuff, etc.). Depending on the number of different devices you use and the number of different sites you consider "critical" (i.e. you don't trust a browser to remember the PW), you should only need to really remember 10 passwords. That's easily do-able, especially if they're things you use at least a couple times a month.

Assuming you've got strong and secret passwords that are unique to each critical site (banking, credit cards, social media), that's all you really need. No need to hook into any cloud based service that itself might be compromised, no need to spend any money, no need to trust the keys to your life to anyone but yourself.

I'm not against password managers. I know smart people who use them. But smart paranoia is better than general paranoia, and for most use cases they've always struck me as creating more security holes than they plug.

YMMV.

No, bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Password Managers, especially "cloud" based password management is absolute garbage.

The thing you should be doing is designing your own password algorithm
eg:
slashdotcanbiteme911
^^^^^^^^ Padding
--------^^^^^^^^ phrase you can remember
-----------------^^^ number you can increment

You use the padding word or phrase to fill out the minimum password length, typically something unique to the site that is obvious. Your phrase is something you use with all sites, and then you increment the number when you reset the password.

If you have sites that require a symbol or something, you hold the SHIFT key for one of those numbers, etc.

If you can't remember this kind of algorithm, then you should be resetting your password every time you login to a site you don't quite care about, and save your memory capacity for your bank accounts.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No, No, No, and even more No.

You Yes people are absolutely naive as fuck.

So, you can't remember all the unique passwords? Do what smart people do and remember a password formula related to the site. Not perfect but the best compromise out there.

Sometimes

[guruevi]

I personally only use password managers for decent passwords on relatively unimportant sites. And if the password manager gets lost, then I'll just have to reset some passwords.

For anything important (bank sites, root etc) I have memorized about 14 random 12-16 character passwords.

Keepass+dropbox

[Anonymous Coward]

Keepass+password file on dropbox+encryption file not on dropbox+password

Re:Dont use lastpass

[F34nor]

Dashlane?

yes. use pass.

[cas2000]

use pass, a gpgv2-protected password store. available packaged for most distros or direct from https://www.passwordstore.org/

graphical frontends also available for those who prefer them.

Re: Dont use lastpass

[Anonymous Coward]

Dashlane uploads a screenshot of every page you use it on. That`s supposed to be for your records. But if you turn the feature off, it still takes a screenshot anyway! That`s when I gave up and went back to using a simple spreadsheet. It gives me peace of mind.

I abandoned KeePass for LastPass

[Muck]

I used KeePass for a long time on linux, but having to use mono sucked, and I felt like there was minimal work going on with the plugin, and the software in general for that matter.

I feel like the weakest link to all password managers is the browser plugin. With that conclusion, I decided to go with LastPass, because I always see their name listed as paying well for bug bounties. I figure that significantly reduces the chances of there being a major 0 day vulnerability in their plugin over the other guys who in general have pretty lackluster dev cycles, and don't seem to have much of a bug bounty presence.

I also do things like: require multi factor, don't auto load passwords on any sites, etc to mitigate my risk using lastpass.

It's a risk - lastpass is a big target, but it seems like they do a good job of taking security seriously, so I decided I was better off with my passwords stored in a world that is actively attacked, but also actively defended instead of a world that is mostly ignored.

RoboForm & Separate e-mails for EVERYONE

[NuttyBee]

So I have used Roboform for god knows how long, it sync across all my devices. Up until recently the last version, you could stick a version on a USB stick and it would allow you to load up an instance on a computer that didnt have Roboform installed. An when you took the USB out, the app disappears. I have something like 500 different passwords managed with it.

But - I also provide every site a separate e-mail.

slashdot@nuttybee.com
yahoo@nuttybee.com

If slashdot@nuttybee.com starts getting Viagra spam, theres a good chance that they got my address from Slashdot. And when that happens, I TKO the address, it goes directly to trash.

If you're lucky enough to figure out my login - slashdot@nuttybee.com and my password '3l13t3haxor', it is usable at absolutely zero other sites.

PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

I am surprised no one has endorsed PasswordSafe yet! Written originally by Bruce Schneier, open source, and ported to Android which lets me sync my pwd database files between devices via Dropbox. I've been using it for years and plan to continue.

Since starting to use it on my mobile, I've segregated my database a bit to prevent a total breach in case my phone were compromised. I have my "lower security" internet website passwords that I need on the go in one file. And I have my financial passwords (which also stores account and credit card numbers that I might need in an emergency) in another file. And then on my PC there is a master file that has all these plus a ton of other accounts I've collected over the years but don't see the need to take on the road in my phone. Each database has a different unlock password, and those are all I have to remember.

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

Also DICEWARE!
Any passwords you are remembering or entering manually, use passphrase generators instead of making up some wonky hard to type and remember system for yourself that is orders of magnitude less secure than easy to quickly enter and very secure strings of dictionary words.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Hans Lehmann]

I've been using PasswordSafe for several years now. My only problem with it is keeping its database synced up between my home computers and my work computer. Whenever I make changes to the copy on my work computer I have to remember to copy it to my home server via sftp and vice versa.

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

Having just read through these comments, my forehead hurts from banging it against the wall and I better flush this explanation out a bit more...

First of all, I'm amazed NO ONE mentioned the classic xkcd comic on memorized random password security: https://xkcd.com/936/

Second, forget about it all you people with your **genius** schemes for generating unique 8-11 character passwords. Congratulations, you've just been hacked. Look up rainbow tables, people!

You are all reinventing square and pentagonal wheels here. It's not working against the threat profile you face, and it's a pain in the ass for you compared to the painless solution that is already out there and explained if you just knew about it...

OK, so here is the true situation you face if you actually want to be secure:
1) You have hundreds of passwords to store.
2) Each one better be 25+ characters of RANDOM data. Otherwise, you face a very realistic threat from brute force / rainbow tables cracking you in trivial amounts of time now or in the near future.
3) You better not be reusing any of them anywhere, cause, you know, hacking.
      3a) If you use a standard root and "permute" it, you are relatively safer until one of your sites storing it in cleartext gets revealed, and then guess what, literally *everyone* uses the first character or two of the site name, or one or two letters more than the first characters to permute. So if you are ever an actual individual target as opposed to a mass script kiddie attack, you're toast. I know, and you thought you were so clever!

AND, even if you managed to memorize all this, it's a goddam PAIN IN THE ASS to type these passwords in, especially on phones.

Here is a solution that is 1) easier to remember, 2) faster to access your websites and login, and 3) order of orders of magnitude more secure:

Stesps:
1) Generate a SINGLE 6-7 word diceware PASSPHRASE. https://theintercept.com/2015/...
2) Memorize it. This should take you all of two minutes.
3) Download passwordsafe or keepass or another trusted OFFLINE password manager. I'm not going to press my personal preferences here. But it should have an automatic password generator feature.
4) Lock the password manager with your diceware passphrase and start generating 30+ character random, unique passwords for each site you use.

If you have a good tool (I use passwordsafe), you can store the URL, username, and password and with a combination of 3 hotkeys open any website, and login in under 2 seconds for any of the hundreds of TRULY SECURE passwords you store.

You can sync the encrypted pwd manager file to your mobile and other devices and access from there with equal security.

And a passphrase with all lower case letters to unlock your pwd manager is even faster to type on a computer or phone than a single one of these insecure, short, alpha-symbol-numeric jokes people are advocating the genius of here.

OK. Now you know. So spread the word and forget all this elaborate security theater nonsense.

Re:PasswordSafe

[CheeseTroll]

As twitnutttt mentioned, Dropbox works really well for syncing the PasswordSafe file between multiple computers, though I'd be reluctant to connect to my personal Dropbox account from a work computer (actually at my current job I *can't*). There's a PasswordSafe (& PasswordSafe Sync) app for Android which works great. On my ipad I use an app called pwSafe which also works with my PasswordSafe file.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Dr_Barnowl]

I use Syncthing - runs on all major OSs including phones, runs (almost*) entirely on your own infrastructure so less scope for being snooped. Packaged for my NAS box as well. (A NAS or equivalent server for backups is something every self-respecting nerd should own). And no arbitrary data size limits.

* It uses some public servers for connection negotiation and sometimes as peers - but all traffic is encrypted.

Re:PasswordSafe

[eneville]

I wonder about the desktops and phones being subject to swap reads. At some level the plain text will be in memory, forcing the machine to swap (does it use hugepages?) would then lead to possibility of something with privilege reading swapped data. Firefox wouldn't be a memory hog now would it?

Re:PasswordSafe

[cathode]

^^^^^ This. If you only read one comment, make it twitnutttt's.

Re:PasswordSafe

[thegarbz]

am surprised no one has endorsed PasswordSafe yet!

Why would they when KeePass is the same but better? Stronger encryption, more features, ported across more platforms.

Re:PasswordSafe

[paulatz]

Except that many websites do not accept very long passwords, and most will require it to contain an upper case letter and/or a number, and may even bitch if you put the upper case at the beginning and the number at the end, at which point you put them somewhere else and you forget the password the moment you press "ok".

Re:PasswordSafe

[TheRaven64]

Second, forget about it all you people with your **genius** schemes for generating unique 8-11 character passwords. Congratulations, you've just been hacked. Look up rainbow tables, people!

If you have upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols then each character is one from a set of 80, so a random 8-character password from this set contains 50 bits of entropy (2^50 possible combinations). To store all such passwords in a rainbow table would require 2^54 bytes (8 petabytes) of storage. I doubt that most hackers have that much space.

A case insensitive 8-character password, in contrast, has just under 38 bits of entropy, so it is quite feasible to compute a rainbow table. Mixing cases alone takes this up to 45 bits, which means that you'll need around half a petabyte for the rainbow table.

If you're using a salted hash to store the password, then the rainbow table needs to be computed for each salt (and if you're sensible, you'll use a different salt for each password, so you need a different rainbow table per password, not per password db). You're better off brute forcing it than storing the rainbow table. A modern GPU can manage about 20,000,000,000 hashes per second, so can search a 34-bit key space per second. 45 bit of entropy gives you a search space that takes about half an hour of GPU time. 50 bits gives you 18 hours. An 11-character password will give you 69 bits of entropy (and a rainbow table that most filesystems can't store, though ZFS can if you can afford enough disks), and will take about 1,000 years to brute force with a single GPU (though with 10,000 GPUs you can do it in a reasonable amount of time). A 10-character password gives you 63 bits, which takes about 17 GPU years to crack and is still probably beyond the capabilities of anyone other than a nation-state adversary.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you have a phd in minutia.

And have invented a nice diarrhea system.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Geeky]

You know the problem with 30+ random characters?

I know of at least a couple of websites that block pasting into the password field. For some dumb reason they think it's more secure to have you type your password than paste it from somewhere. Which of course encourages short, easy to type passwords.Sad but true.

Some - especially enterprise tools - also enforce special characters, mix of lower and upper and all that stuff that makes it harder to use a phrase. Couple with password expiry every 30 days and no reuse of your last ten passwords and they've created the perfect recipe for poor passwords that get scribbled on post it notes.

Otherwise, yes, I agree - I use Keepass and have it generate random passwords for most things now. Alternatively if a site allows authentication with a google account I use that, with a secondary gmail account I keep for that purpose. That's mainly for forums and other non-critical things.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Gussington]

2) Each one better be 25+ characters of RANDOM data. Otherwise, you face a very realistic threat from brute force / rainbow tables cracking you in trivial amounts of time now or in the near future.

This is why no-one like Security 'experts'. Just because something can be broken into, doesn't mean it will. As demonstrated by the millions of locked houses with glass windows that aren't being broken into right now.

Re:PasswordSafe

[AmiMoJo]

So much bad advice, it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with what NOT to do:

First of all, I'm amazed NO ONE mentioned the classic xkcd comic on memorized random password security: https://xkcd.com/936/ ...

1) Generate a SINGLE 6-7 word diceware PASSPHRASE.

Such passphrases are EXTREMELY weak. The words are easily predictable (just use a few different language dictionaries, and the usual uppercase/lowercase/substitution combos) and concatenating several of them doesn't increase the amount of entropy enough to resist brute force attacks on a cheap GPU.

Look up rainbow tables, people!

Salting negates that threat. If the site doesn't salt or limits you to 11 character passwords, it has bigger problems and a good password won't protect your account.

AND, even if you managed to memorize all this, it's a goddam PAIN IN THE ASS to type these passwords in, especially on phones.

Any half way good password manager will copy them for you. Keepass on Windows and Android does, for example, and it's implemented in a secure way. You don't even have to display the password on screen, so no danger of shoulder surfing.

The best option is to use something like Keepass with both a password and a keyfile. Store the database in the cloud for easy access, but keep the keyfile local only. Then you only have to copy it to each device once, while the database can be synced whenever changes are made. Use a good, random password (you just have to memorize it, there is no getting around it).

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

... no one has endorsed PasswordSafe ...

I want to, but everything on it is a fixed size that is just so fucking tiny. Keepass obeys decades-old rules of GUIs; it has panes that can be re-sized. More important, Keepass is designed to store textual data, passwords are optional, so it has a viewing pane that doesn't require three mouse-clicks to access and it doesn't throw a tantrum when the username/password fields are empty.

Re:PasswordSafe

[CrimsonAvenger]

Except that many websites do not accept very long passwords, and most will require it to contain an upper case letter and/or a number, and may even bitch if you put the upper case at the beginning and the number at the end, at which point you put them somewhere else and you forget the password the moment you press "ok".

But my PasswordSafe remembers them for me, so who really cares if I forget them the moment I press OK?

Actually, since my PasswordSafe generates them in the first place, I don't have to even bother forgetting them;

Oh, and I use the "comments" field in PasswordSafe to remember "secret questions" and their answers. That way I can use random answers to the secret questions, so even someone who knows me won't have a clue what to put into the secret question field.....

Re:PasswordSafe

[Frederic54]

Absolutely, a couple of years ago I personnaly tested and reviewed a lot of password manager, and since then I use PasswordSafe on both windows and linux.
There is no way I will use one with "cloud" support when you have no control on it. Even then I don't put my pwsafe.psafe3 in Google Drive or anything, only on a USB key.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Big_Breaker]

What about non-standard characters? Is the whole ASCII set generally available? Some websites are explicit about which characters are valid but many say nothing.

Most attackers using a rainbow table or brute force would probably not include (Alt-"214") in any of their attack attempts.

Re:PasswordSafe

[prunus.avium]

The trouble with using bits of entropy as the measuring stick is cracking isn't done by brute force anymore. Even as of 5 years ago they started using dictionary attacks.

Which means that if you have a real word in there to create the 10 characters, the time to crack it is significantly shorter. And quick little substitutions (leet-speak) are being added in to the more sophisticated software so changing "password" to something like "P@ssW0rd" buys you a few seconds at best.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent didn't say to use very long passwords on websites, they said to use a very long master password to unlock your password manager. And to use the password manager's random password generator to get good entropy for individual sites. Password managers can generate passwords of whatever length necessary, with case numbers and/or special characters as required.

Re:PasswordSafe

[drakaan]

Actually, parent said to start generating 30+ character random passwords for each site you use after generating the 6-7 word passphrase.

Re:PasswordSafe

[gfxguy]

That still doesn't solve the idiotic problem of sites not accepting long passwords, some site requiring special characters, some sites refusing special characters, etc., etc.. It otherwise seems like a great scheme (although I haven't tried it), and would be perfect if you could edit the generated password to fit a site's special requirements.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Rainbow tables are also done based on dictionary words. XKCD computes entropy based on letters. If you use the espell dictionary for the table, the XKCD example does have more possibilities (more word possibilities vs. # of character possibilities) for each position, but there are only 4 positions (one position is one word / character). This is going to be much easier to calculate, as the number of positions represents a exponential increase in workload while the addition of another possibility is a linear increase.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Oswald McWeany]

If you have upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols then each character is one from a set of 80, so a random 8-character password from this set contains 50 bits of entropy (2^50 possible combinations). To store all such passwords in a rainbow table would require 2^54 bytes (8 petabytes) of storage. I doubt that most hackers have that much space.

I don't have data- but I'm willing to bet that passwords that require an upper case letter, a number and a symbol can be simplified 90% of the time.

I highly suspect that the upper case character is the first one in the password over 75% of the time. That the number and special character are the last two characters in the password 75% of the time- and that the other five characters in an 8 character password are in positions 2-6 and all lower case over 50% of the time.

You can limit quite a lot of possibly passwords if you only look for 26 possible combinations of first individual 6 characters, and about 10 possible combinations of last 2 individual characters each. That's still a lot of combinations- but a lot less than the 80 or so possible unique characters for each individual spot- and it wouldn't catch every password, but could probably crack a decent % of them.

Re:PasswordSafe

[mrzaph0d]

PasswordSafe has an overall policy, but you can override it per password to match a site's specific requirements.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, I'm amazed NO ONE mentioned the classic xkcd comic on memorized random password security: https://xkcd.com/936/ ...

1) Generate a SINGLE 6-7 word diceware PASSPHRASE.

Such passphrases are EXTREMELY weak. The words are easily predictable (just use a few different language dictionaries, and the usual uppercase/lowercase/substitution combos) and concatenating several of them doesn't increase the amount of entropy enough to resist brute force attacks on a cheap GPU.

Er, what? The letters on a keyboard are easily predictable too, what matters is that the order they are in is generated randomly and not by a human. As long as you use the Diceware methods to generate passwords randomly you have a higher number of possible combinations to work with (the Diceware word list is 7776 words so 7 of those picked randomly gives you a lot of combinations).

See here: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/10294/can-a-dictionary-attack-crack-a-diceware-passphrase

Look up rainbow tables, people!

Salting negates that threat. If the site doesn't salt or limits you to 11 character passwords, it has bigger problems and a good password won't protect your account.

AND, even if you managed to memorize all this, it's a goddam PAIN IN THE ASS to type these passwords in, especially on phones.

Any half way good password manager will copy them for you. Keepass on Windows and Android does, for example, and it's implemented in a secure way. You don't even have to display the password on screen, so no danger of shoulder surfing.

The best option is to use something like Keepass with both a password and a keyfile. Store the database in the cloud for easy access, but keep the keyfile local only. Then you only have to copy it to each device once, while the database can be synced whenever changes are made. Use a good, random password (you just have to memorize it, there is no getting around it).

Something easily memorable like a Diceware password, perhaps.

Re:PasswordSafe

[GLMDesigns]

I love your answer but disagree with a small part of it. Passwords need not be 100% random to be effective.

Let's say you made a variation on a passphrase.( I am super secret + site) so Iamsupersecretsd (for slashdot)

Let's say the attacker (in one of his many iterations) has a brute force for limiting letters to the 18 most commonly used [1]

the above password would have an entropy of 20^20 which is approximately 1x10^26

A brute force attack of a billion / second = 8.6x10^13 / day = 1x10^12 days

I think we're confident that the above human generated password defeats any brute force attack.

What about dictionary attacks?

There are 6000 words in a basic English dictionary. The above example are all in the basic dictionary. (Less if you exclude words with z,q,x,j,k,v)

6000^4 == 10^15

Which means that the above password would be cracked in about 11 days.

However ou can randomize your password to a point that it becomes useful and yet remain

Example use "z" for the spaces

izamzsuperzsecretzsd

You're now at 24 characters and it will combat the dictionary attack (to a minor extent)

replace some letters with a number. Let's be obvious and substitute all "e" with a 3.

after all we're all super cool script kiddies here.

mind you we just doubled the effort of the dictionary attack. Substitute e for 3 and that 6000 word dictionary became 12000.- it will now take 22 days.

A few more changes and your password will be secure for all but the NSA, FBI type folks.

Please correct me if I'm wrong here.



[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
[2] https://lotsofwords.com/-z-q-j...

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

Thanks for filling in a few details I left out, guys. :)

Yes, individual sites with poor password support are a problem (short max length, or not allowing special characters). In response, PasswordSafe (or similar quality tools) allow you to override the password generator policy for a particular site to have a particular length and require or exclude certain character classes.

I totally forgot to mention the notes field! Yes, you should use it to store the secret questions and answers required for some sites. AND, use the password generator feature to generate random answers to these questions. These should be thought of as just additional passwords. DON'T USE REAL ANSWERS TO REAL QUESTIONS! And the length policy should be extra long because these answers are usually not case sensitive.
For example: "What was my first pet?" Answer: klihyrseet4rslchvlajyt2565zfx trdrzoij nxvk52juzhf ygvzhxdjvw 34ncolsd2k jlgcda52sufiogxciuyfu

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

Totally agree!
I am consistently pissed off by these few websites that think they are HELPING security by preventing you from pasting into the password field. In other words, they are preventing you from using the most secure password scheme out there... a super long, random password that you don't ever type or memorize but paste in from a tool.

Well, in every system there are exceptions. And unfortunately, for these few sites, you are stuck using a shorter, less secure password so you can type it in. oh well

Re:PasswordSafe

[DarkOx]

If you have upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols then each character is one from a set of 80, so a random 8-character password from this set contains 50 bits of entropy (2^50 possible combinations). To store all such passwords in a rainbow table would require 2^54 bytes (8 petabytes) of storage. I doubt that most hackers have that much space.

They don't and they don't need it. In fact it would require more storage in most cases because of salts.

8 chars or so is about the tipping point where it takes longer to search the storage for a hash mach than it does just to generate the hashes on the fly and see if they match, using a gang a GPU units. That said 8 chars of truly random pick 80 selections will still stand up pretty damn well. Most folks doing password cracking are still using dictionary based attacks. Granted they 20 gig dictionaries with ever Latin root language word and all common char substitution with other 'rules' as well but its not a true brute force.

Re:PasswordSafe

[DarkOx]

You fight the subsitition rules with some effectiveness and still keep your memory sane if you make up some slightly more complex rules for your own use like:

a gets replaced with @ unless it the second occurrence in the word.

o gets replaced with 0 only if its the fist occurrence.

7 always replaces t

5 replaces s only if two ss appear consecutively

and so on. If you make up a ruleset like that or write it down somewhere than you can still probably get a way with using combinations of dictionary words for a little long. Kali contains a pretty popular password dictionary called rockyou that has most of these words applied, its always worth a quick grep over that to make sure what you selected ain't in that list.

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

Such [Diceware] passphrases are EXTREMELY weak. The words are easily predictable (just use a few different language dictionaries, and the usual uppercase/lowercase/substitution combos) and concatenating several of them doesn't increase the amount of entropy enough to resist brute force attacks on a cheap GPU.

I provided references you can review regarding the security of Diceware passwords. Do you have any references to share for your "alternate" facts?

Salting negates [the rainbow tables] threat.

Very true. Now you just have to make sure all of the 100s of sites you log into know this and employ strong hashing and salting procedures.
As LinkedIn proved, you cannot rely on even large, "reputable" companies to employ even a modicum of secure password storage, sadly.
Therefore, if you want to be secure, you must plan that individual site passwords will eventually be compromised due to bad website coding.
In addition, there are myriad other attacks against websites that will inevitably lead to some passwords you use being compromised in plaintext.

AND, even if you managed to memorize all this, it's a goddam PAIN IN THE ASS to type these passwords in, especially on phones.

Any half way good password manager will copy them for you. Keepass on Windows and Android does, for example, and it's implemented in a secure way.

We are 100% in agreement here, and that's exactly what I was advocating. (So, I think you misread me.)

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

I wonder about the desktops and phones being subject to swap reads. At some level the plain text will be in memory

Absolutely!
I didn't mention it, but full disk encryption is employed on all my devices.
Security requires a consideration at all layers. You are correct.

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

I can totally understand that sentiment.
And yet the idea behind the strong encryption used to secure the psafe3 file is that, as long as your passphrase to secure it is strong, this file is as good as worthless even to someone who has physical access to it.

Re:PasswordSafe

[MAXOMENOS]

Such passphrases are EXTREMELY weak

They're actually not. Assuming you know the dictionary (and there are a bunch out there, so that's a heck of an assumption), if they do it according to the algorithm (using ACTUAL DICE), there are 6^5*W possible combinations where W = the number of words in the passphrase. Use W = 8 if you like. That's 640 or about 2103.3 possible combinations, assuming you do it right.

Any half way good password manager will copy them for you. Keepass on Windows and Android does, for example, and it's implemented in a secure way. You don't even have to display the password on screen, so no danger of shoulder surfing.

The point of the diceware passphrase is that one uses it as a password on one's KeePass (or Password Safe) database. Since it's all lower case, it's easier to type on a phone.

Re:PasswordSafe

[MAXOMENOS]

Correction: that's 6^40 or 2^103.3 possible combinations. Darn HTML....

Re:PasswordSafe

[AmiMoJo]

It all depends how good your word list is and how many words you are willing to memorize.

The XKCD method will be cracked in under a second on a GPU. Four words is way too short, and because humans pick them the actual word list is fairly short and can be weighted.

So if you want the dicewear method to work, you need a really good word list and you must accept the first randomly generated one. No waiting for one that is easy to remember because that can be modelled. And it needs to be long, at least 7 words. To be fair, you did say 7 words.

Re:PasswordSafe

[slashdot_commentator]

unique 8-11 character passwords [...] Look up rainbow tables, people!

The rainbow table I'm aware of only goes up to 9 characters with a 4TB dictionary for NTLM hashes. Granted, with a more targeted dictionary, you may get up to 11 characters. While I'm sure 11+ characters could be vulnerable to rainbow tables, it would require serious hardware investment. I try to go over 12 characters myself, for passwords I care about. And it goes to half for a SHA256 hash string (64 bytes).

Re:PasswordSafe

[david_thornley]

I have to do financial transactions on a site that only 6-8 alphanumeric characters, not starting with a digit.

Re: PasswordSafe

[TekPolitik]

Use keepass2 Android with an InputStick. It looks like a keyboard on both the device and the desktop.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Web services that limit the number of characters entered are sufficiently insecure that if you put in your password of choice (like this guys 30+) and it says "too many characters..." close the tab or browser window and forget them. Anything you store on them will eventually be hacked and leaked. The more specific the guidelines the simpler the rainbow table required to hack it.

As for the stuff about character placement, if you are using a decent random generator you can define the pattern and thus bypass capital letters at the beginning or end.

As for forgetting them that is why you use the password manager in the first place. You only need to recall the one password that meets whatever rules you set yourself. Passphrases are a tidy way to use dictionary words without limiting potential complexity too much. A seven word sentence can easily be in excess of 6*10^76 possible combinations. A government entity might be able to brute force it in a reasonable time, but it is still generally "good enough" to stop ordinary hackers.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

I store my KeePass database on box.com and access it on my desktop PCs, laptops, tablets and phone via WebDAV. It just shows up like it's a local file.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because that very old advice is obsolete. The XKCD password scheme considered dangerous by security experts..

Re:PasswordSafe

[godel_56]

Second, forget about it all you people with your **genius** schemes for generating unique 8-11 character passwords. Congratulations, you've just been hacked. Look up rainbow tables, people!

If you have upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols then each character is one from a set of 80, so a random 8-character password from this set contains 50 bits of entropy (2^50 possible combinations). To store all such passwords in a rainbow table would require 2^54 bytes (8 petabytes) of storage. I doubt that most hackers have that much space.

A case insensitive 8-character password, in contrast, has just under 38 bits of entropy, so it is quite feasible to compute a rainbow table. Mixing cases alone takes this up to 45 bits, which means that you'll need around half a petabyte for the rainbow table.

If you're using a salted hash to store the password, then the rainbow table needs to be computed for each salt (and if you're sensible, you'll use a different salt for each password, so you need a different rainbow table per password, not per password db). You're better off brute forcing it than storing the rainbow table. A modern GPU can manage about 20,000,000,000 hashes per second, so can search a 34-bit key space per second. 45 bit of entropy gives you a search space that takes about half an hour of GPU time. 50 bits gives you 18 hours. An 11-character password will give you 69 bits of entropy (and a rainbow table that most filesystems can't store, though ZFS can if you can afford enough disks), and will take about 1,000 years to brute force with a single GPU (though with 10,000 GPUs you can do it in a reasonable amount of time). A 10-character password gives you 63 bits, which takes about 17 GPU years to crack and is still probably beyond the capabilities of anyone other than a nation-state adversary.

Damn straight, and no one has mentioned password stretching schemes such as PBKDF2, bCrypt, and sCrypt which further complicate the cracker's task by thousands of times, if not more.

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

That's because that very old advice is obsolete. The XKCD password scheme considered dangerous by security experts..

Thank you for the Schneier post. That was a very interesting read. I included the XKCD comic to explain the critique of pseudo-random password templates, and I noted that Schneier linked to an article that explained very eloquently the point I was trying to make about using the weakness of using elaborate "templates" to generate random seeming passwords:

"This means that there are two ways to make a secure password: use a template the password crackers don’t know about (or don’t bother to try, because so few people use it for their passwords), or use any old template and feed it with enough random bits. The former strategy relies on outwitting smart people who spend much of their time coming up with better ways to crack passwords; the latter just takes more coin flips. It’s security by obscurity vs. real security."

Then, Schneier recommended the use of his own tool PasswordSafe to generate random passwords, as did I. So far, we are on the same page. =)

Finally though there is the question of how to generate a good, secure master password for your password manager. Note that I did not include XKCD in order to recommend their passphrase generation method! (This is the method that Schneier criticized.) Instead, I included a link to an article about Diceware passwords. Diceware uses the philosophy just described in the snippet about whereby even if the attacker knows you used it, there is still too much guaranteed entropy for them to successfully attack it.

For metrics on the *lower bound entropy* (thanks, Schneier) of Diceware, here is a link:
http://world.std.com/~reinhold...

"A five-word Diceware passphrase has an entropy of at least 64.6 bits; six words have 77.5 bits, seven words 90.4 bits, eight words 103 bits. (Four words only provide 51.6 bits, about the same as an 8 character password made up of random ASCII characters. Both are breakable in less than a day with two dozen graphics processors.) Inserting one extra letter at random adds about 10 bits of entropy. Here is a rough idea of how much protection various lengths provide, based on updated estimates by A.K. Lenstra (See www.kelength.com). Needless to say, projections for the far future have the most uncertainty.

        Five words are breakable with a thousand or so PCs equipped with high-end graphics processors. (Criminal gangs with botnets of infected PCs can marshal such resources.)

        Six words may be breakable by an organization with a very large budget, such as a large country's security agency.

        Seven words and longer are unbreakable with any known technology, but may be within the range of large organizations by around 2030.

        Eight words should be completely secure through 2050."

Re:PasswordSafe

[suutar]

how is 77 bits of entropy weak? (6 words chosen independently from a 7776 word dictionary) Or are you thinking of a different diceware than this one?

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

Admittedly, 30 is overkill. =) But you know it's enough! And the beauty of a password manager is that it's no additional cost or effort or difficulty to generate a 72 character or 30 character password versus a 5 character one. You just click a button. And you never have to type it; you just paste.

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

http://world.std.com/~reinhold...
"Entropy of 64.6 bits is breakable with a thousand or so PCs equipped with high-end graphics processors. (Criminal gangs with botnets of infected PCs can marshal such resources.)
77.5 bits may be breakable by an organization with a very large budget, such as a large country's security agency."

And, as someone else noted, this is based on TRUE RANDOMNESS. Everyone I referred to was using the opposite of a random generation scheme; they were describing a decidely specific and NONRANDOM method for generating a password that *looked* random:

https://treskal.com/kha/blog/2...
How Much Entropy in That Password ::
"This means that there are two ways to make a secure password: use a template the password crackers don’t know about (or don’t bother to try, because so few people use it for their passwords), or use any old template and feed it with enough random bits. The former strategy relies on outwitting smart people who spend much of their time coming up with better ways to crack passwords; the latter just takes more coin flips. It’s security by obscurity vs. real security."

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you insist on a flawed methodology!? None of this buys you any REAL additional security.
It's lots of mental gymnastics that adds no actual additional entropy to your password.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found using non-standard characters to be enough of a crapshoot to stop using them. I stopped after my router accepted setting a password with a non-standard character, but wouldn't accept it for login, and the only choice I had was to do a factory reset, losing hours of configuration changes.

Re:PasswordSafe

[TheRaven64]

There's a fairly common bug in a lot of password systems (I first encountered it locking myself out of my Psion Series 3, but it was also in macOS for a long time) where you can enter arbitrary ASCII, 8-bit, or even unicode characters when you set the password, but not when you enter it to log in. Only try it with systems that have a good password reset mechanism!

Re: PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, so misinformed, it's kind of sad.

Re: PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

What company only allows 6 to 8 characters in a password? You (and all customers) should be loudly and publicly complaining. Tweet about it and refer to their Twitter handle and some hashtags like #security and #password and #hacked and #insecure. (IIRC Charles Schwab formerly did this, but they have since changed it. Thanks, people!)

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of diceware was that the words are "easily predictable" -- that is, each word is drawn from a (known, even!) pool of words. -- if there are around 6000 words in the pool, and words are drawn completely randomly (hence the dice), you should have about 12.5 bits of entropy per word, so 6 words chosen this way is 75 bits of entropy .. try cracking that.. I'll wait...
assuming 1 trillion guesses per second, it will still take uh.. a lot of time (naive estimate ~ 1k years)

Re: PasswordSafe

[david_thornley]

I have to work with an insecure site. I don't want to tell everyone where there's an easy site to hack into.

Re:PasswordSafe

[MercTech]

I gave up on password managers years ago. The issue is transportability when you have to access sites via multiple terminals. Especially when having to use corporate terminals where installing a password manager is blocked for security.
The best I've come up with to deal with multiple company assigned random generated passwords is a file on a cloud server with strong encryption. I can access my password list from anywhere that allows web browsing if I have to look up a little used password.
Not the optimum but the best I've found that gets the job done.

Re: PasswordSafe

[alexandru_preoteasa]

Banks, sadly. WTF do they care, they're insured! Incentives, people, incentives matter... but who's gonna make sure the penalties are stiff enough to incentivize best practices? The regulators? Captured a long time ago...

Re:PasswordSafe

[Lorens]

Schneier misinterpreted XKCD. The words must be chosen absolutely randomly.

(But I still often use Schneier's method of taking initials from a sentence, because that's the only sane way to remember a password when it's limited to eight chars, which is a problem I regularly have to deal with).

Re:PasswordSafe

[Lorens]

Replying to myself... http://ask.metafilter.com/1930... dated 2 1/2 years before Schneier's post.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

The best I've come up with to deal with multiple company assigned random generated passwords is a file on a cloud server with strong encryption.

So why don't you use a password manager again? This is exactly what I do with my password manager's encrypted database file.

If you can't install apps, then you can always use KeeWeb, provided your company hasn't also blocked your internet access.

Re: PasswordSafe

[paulatz]

Yeah, my bank actually uses my birthday and a 6 digit code for password. I wish all their backups may be filled with goatsee

Re:PasswordSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

a little bullshit. Your not going to realistically rainbow table a reasonable password digest based on any of the SHA-2 hashes.

You are also not going to rainbow table against a SHA-512 hash, period, password digest or not.

In fact, even rainbow tabling MD5 based password digests is somewhat not worth it(note that MD5 and SHA1 are broken mathematically)

You can rainbow table NTLM hashes that windows uses for logins because Microsoft is fucking stupid.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Rakarra]

This is why no-one like Security 'experts'. Just because something can be broken into, doesn't mean it will. As demonstrated by the millions of locked houses with glass windows that aren't being broken into right now.

But the Internet is different, since it's easier to check, and the penalties aren't really there, not to mention jurisdiction problems. Someone breaks into my house? Then it was almost certainly a local job, and the police will be interested. My server is compromised by some kid in Romania? No one will care.

I don't think I've ever had a case where someone walked up to the door of my house and jiggled the doorknob just to see if it was unlocked, or walk around the side of the building to look through the window. But if I set up a random generic computer facing the 'net, it won't take long before I can look through the logs and see dozens of random doorknob-jiggling events a day.

Re:PasswordSafe

[Gussington]

But the Internet is different, since it's easier to check, and the penalties aren't really there, not to mention jurisdiction problems. Someone breaks into my house? Then it was almost certainly a local job, and the police will be interested.

You reckon? I've had intruders a couple of times, the cops came over, did a standard report then I never heard from them again. Most property crimes these days are treated simply as insurance issues.

My server is compromised by some kid in Romania? No one will care.

Firstly, most security issues are internal, so protecting yourself from kids in Romania should be way down the list of priorities.
Secondly, my piont was about the stupid recommendation for complex passwords. A complex password is more likely to be written down, thus making it less secure to your main threat, internal attack.

I don't think I've ever had a case where someone walked up to the door of my house and jiggled the doorknob just to see if it was unlocked, or walk around the side of the building to look through the window.

How would you know? When I was much younger, stupider and poorer we used to roam car parks checking door handles for unlocked cars to steal loose change and CDs. And I'd be lying if I said we didn't try it once or twice on houses too.

But if I set up a random generic computer facing the 'net, it won't take long before I can look through the logs and see dozens of random doorknob-jiggling events a day.

Which a stupidly complex password isn't going to solve, just like a door with 50 different locks on it won't make your house safer.
I'm not saying don't have a strong password, but since most attacks aren't brute force password guessing, stupidly complex passwords are almost worthless.

Re:PasswordSafe

[LienRag]

Nice, how do you protect from disk failure/stolen phone?
I don't use any password manager because I don't want to be locked out of all my accounts if I lose the manager config file (if that's how it works, I don't even know), don't know if I can access my accounts from other computers, and because too I don't know which one to use and don't know whether different managers are compatible (i.e, if I start with one and decide to change, will it be easy to do so?)...

Re:PasswordSafe

[GPS Pilot]

I know nothing about cryptography. Maybe I have a misconception that you can correct.

What you're saying is, that you can generate all possible 34-bit passwords in one second.

But simply generating all those passwords is a far cry from hacking someone's account, is it not?

You have to make a login attempt with each one of those passwords, and wait for the server to respond with a "password incorrect" error before moving on to the next one. Each failed attempt would take at least a few milliseconds. (Assuming the server allows millions of rapid-fire failed login attempts.)

So associating a time of "one second" with 32-bit space is not realistic. Or, what am I missing?

Re:PasswordSafe

[TheRaven64]

Typically this matters for offline attacks (i.e. when an attacker has copied the password database, which happens surprisingly frequently). If the site is really stupid, then this is stored in plain text and it's game over already at this point, irrespective of how strong the password is. Hopefully, most people aren't that stupid.

The first step away from that is to store a cryptographic hash of the password. To check the password, you apply the same hash function and compare the output. The hash function gives a fixed-size output for any input. Because it's a hash, there are an infinite number of possible inputs for any given hash, but because it's a cryptographically strong hash these are close to uniformly distributed so the probability of finding two random inputs with the same hash is vanishingly small. For a secure 128-bit hash (which MD5 was thought to be, until it was shown that it wasn't), you have a 1/2^128 chance of two arbitrary inputs giving the same output and any password-length (i.e. short enough for a human to type) inputs are going to map to different values. This means that, while you can't easily compute an input value for every possible 128-bit hash (for one thing, there isn't enough storage space on the planet for all of them), you can compute a hash for every relatively-short input and store those in a table (known as a rainbow table), or you can simply iterate through the entire set of short inputs and compute a hash of them.

The next step is to add a salt. If you prepend the same string to every password before hashing it, then a rainbow table won't work. If your password is 'password' then one person's salted password file might store it as the hash of 'foopassword' and another's as the hash of 'barpassword' and so you need a different rainbow table for each one. You can compute the rainbow table in the same amount of time though, so this doesn't buy you much. If you prepend a different random string to each password before hashing it, and store that value along with the hash, then an attacker can't even construct a rainbow table for your password database, they need a separate one per password (at which point it's just as easy to brute force it).

As you say, for online attacks the limiting factor is the rate at which login attempts are permitted and even a small delay - for example, one attempt every 10 seconds - makes brute force attacks infeasible. The danger there comes from people reusing passwords: if I get a password db from one site and crack the passwords in it, then I can try them on a huge number of other site automatically. This is even worse when people use email addresses as usernames, because it makes it easy to tie attempts together.

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

Nice, how do you protect from disk failure/stolen phone?

The beauty of a reputable password manager (e.g., PasswordSafe) is that the password database file is protected with strong encryption and a master password. Therefore the file can be copied many times and saved/shared anywhere, even publicly. You can back it up on USB sticks, cloud storage, even post it on a URL of a domain you own. I have many offline and online backups that I keep in various places in case of a data loss. (External hard drive backups, cloud backups, safe deposit box.)

Also, as I noted, sync tools like Dropbox are very useful for keeping the current version of your password database file available on all your devices.

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

Just to update the discussion, on March 15, Bruce Schneier's newsletter contained a mention of the same advice described above:

"First, don't choose a guessable password. This is more than not using 'password1' or 'qwerty'; most easily memorizable passwords are guessable. My advice is to generate passwords you have to remember by using either the XKCD scheme[*] or the Schneier scheme, and to use large random passwords stored in a password manager for everything else."
https://www.schneier.com/crypt...

* Note: The "XKCD scheme" is more of a vague concept than a true system and could be done in a way that results in a not-very-secure password. A more rigorous system based on the "XKCD scheme" is described by Diceware passwords: http://world.std.com/~reinhold...

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

From Bruce Schneier today:
https://www.schneier.com/crypt...

There are two basic ways hackers can get at your e-mail and private documents. One way is to guess your password. That's how hackers got their hands on personal photos of celebrities from iCloud in 2014.

How to protect yourself from this attack is pretty obvious. First, don't choose a guessable password. This is more than not using "password1" or "qwerty"; most easily memorizable passwords are guessable. My advice is to generate passwords you have to remember by using either the [Diceware password] scheme or the Schneier scheme, and to use large random passwords stored in a password manager for everything else.

Second, turn on two-factor authentication where you can, like Google's 2-Step Verification. This adds another step besides just entering a password, such as having to type in a one-time code that's sent to your mobile phone. And third, don't reuse the same password on any sites you actually care about.

You're not done, though. Hackers have accessed accounts by exploiting the "secret question" feature and resetting the password. That was how Sarah Palin's e-mail account was hacked in 2008. The problem with secret questions is that they're not very secret and not very random. My advice is to refuse to use those features. Type randomness into your keyboard, or choose a really random answer and store it in your password manager.

Re:PasswordSafe

[LienRag]

OK, thanks.
Your Dropbox account needs a password, doesn't it?
How do you manage this one?

Re:PasswordSafe

[twitnutttt]

I keep the Dropbox pwd in the PasswordSafe, just like all the rest. ;-)
I use Dropbox just to sync the file; I wouldn't need to login there to access it in the event of a loss because I have other copies.

Rolodex File

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what "password managers" are. You may as well just write all you passwords down and post them in plain text on a publicly accessible website.

PasswordMaker, on the other hand, makes a unique password for each site/system and you do not have to remember anything, and the passwords are not stored anywhere so they cannot be compromised.

Passopolis (formerly Mitro)

[skinlayers]

I'm sad that Passopolis/Mitro hasn't gotten more love after the Mitro team open sourced it, and We Are Wizards took it over. Mitro was great before Twitter acquired the team behind it. Sadly, Passopolis has never bothered to get the Android client working again. I looked at building it myself, but the toolchain is ancient by Android standards..

https://passopolis.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mitro uses Google's Keyczar on the server and Keyczar JS implementation on the browser.

Master key is a 128-bit AES key derived using PBKDF2 (SHA-1; 50000 iterations; 16 salt bytes)
RSA with 2048-bit keys using OAEP-SHA1 (separate signing and encryption keys)
AES with 128-bit keys in CBC mode with PKCS5 padding
All encrypted data includes a MAC (HMAC-SHA1)

2fa and phone

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really easy for someone to port your number to there sim. Happend to that YouTuber Linus Sebastian.

KeePassX

[TheOuterLinux]

I like it because you can use it for more than just passwords. You can store bookmarks and files in it too. I don't trust bookmark sync. I'd never use browser extensions for sensitive information because that info is only as secure as the weakest link, be it the extension or web browser. I also never use a cloud service to store the database files. Surely if something is important, you can remember a single password and where you keep a flash drive. KeePassX also allows the use of key files as a password. You can have it as both so if the password is compromised, they still need the file. This way, you can use a cloud service but it will only open on your computer. You could also keep them on separate services. What I do is create a dummy KeePassX database and key file and edit it with more random string stuff and then create the real KeePassX database and use the edited key file from before. It's only 44 characters long if you don't. 4096 that sucker! You could maybe also use Steganography to hide the key file within the icon of the database file if separate cloud storage is too much.

Nope

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

Not in a million years.

No, Betteridge (oh wait)

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is yes. Absolutely you should. My keepass file is teh precioussss.

Re:No, Betteridge (oh wait)

[Anonymous Coward]

Replying to myself.

Some people have some really stupid ideas about passwords above.

1) You don't need to use a remote storage service. My keepass data has NEVER passed over the wire.
2) You can use actual strong password with Keepass and it's EASY.
3) I never re-use a password,nor any simple modification of a password. Every password is random.
4) I never forget a password because all my passwords are in one easily managed place.
5) I only have three passwords to actually remember, one for my phone, my PC, and keepass. And if I forget the phone password, I can use the PC and vice versa.
6) The keepass data gets backed up to sneaker net with my other crypto stuff.

Re: No, Betteridge (oh wait)

[Anonymous Coward]

We should create a sneaker net, everyone has a USB drive and when you want to transfer files a program automatically determines who to meet and trade with to route the drives between people.

Static compile

[s.petry]

Load the app on the same usb as you keep your DB. Execute from the USB. Loading a keylogger which opens Keepass is not too complex. *think NSA and CIA snooping*

There's a better way, for the sensitive stuff

[hyades1]

Not all data are worthy of serious protection. For information I have that is worth it, I simply write a short verse about something I'll be sure to remember and use that as the password. If I felt the need to record it (usually I don't), I'd make it part of something else which might not be protected at all.

For example, if I wanted to make sure a list of American clients and their information stayed safe, the first thing I'd do would be to encrypt the files, then the drive I was keeping them on. Then I might write something like, "Trumpty Dumpty building a wall/Trumpty Dumpty lacking in balls/All of the contards who voted him in/Are treasonous hillbillies boning their kin."

That would be the password to the drive. I'd store it with other verses, multimedia files and essays, and put a link to the whole folder on my desktop. I doubt very much even the best hacker could crack that. But if I was really worried, I'd have something related but obvious only to me as the password to the folder or file containing the actual information.

Nothing is completely secure, but I think that's not too far off. I'd be interested to hear from a real expert how they'd go about cracking it, short of torturing the password out of me.

Use a hardware password manager like mooltipass

[Bruzer]

At 2017 FOSDEM I attended a session about the mooltipass hardware password manager. The speaker talked about his successful kickstarter campaign the mooltipas and how he verified the integrity of every step of the process. The device is open source hardware, that is assembled and tested with a tamper evident case. It attaches via USB and uses a chip and pin smartcard to store encrypted passwords. You can check it out here: https://www.themooltipass.com/

Keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

Use KeePass and sync it with your favorite web storage. Protect it with two factor authentication and or add a salt to all the passwords so if the database is comprised, they won't get the whole password. Yubikey works great to secure the DB.

Compartmentalisation has always been the key

[Anonymous Coward]

From microprocessors to supertankers, drawing distinct lines to contain the incoming perils has always been a major risk containment engineering trick!

In the case of passwords, the following split works well for me:
* Business passwords are a class of their own: 2FA fully used, plus business dedicated password vault (keePass)
* private web-generic class passwords can be stored within lastpass.com with minimal hustle; yes, you need to trust it; yes, you need to balance your risks there
* private google/gmail 2FA-enabled domain is a distinct class of its own across devices; it serves as "password-reset-lender-of-last-resort" when above line fails
btw. Banks and such should normally give you their own 2FA, so security collapse of the above should be irrelevant.

In short, there is no silver bullet; yet, an onion-approach design and a distinct pool for your business/bank related stuff can get you going for quite a while.

Honey pot

[Tony Isaac]

Password managers, especially cloud-based, provide a huge honey pot for hackers. Regardless of the encryption algorithm used, there is ALWAYS a weak link in the chain somewhere. Remember Heartbleed, or the LastPass hack of 2016?

If you must use a password manager, use a lesser-known one, because these will be a less-attractive target for hackers. Or try storing password hints, so the actual password isn't stored anywhere.

Re:Honey pot

[Anonymous Coward]

You're using the wrong word. Honey pots are dedicated servers that have been deliberately set up in a way that makes them easy to hack. They usually contain a special kernel or other modifications to allow realtime monitoring of the hacker in order to study his behavior.

It's Them, Not Me

[JimSadler]

I am mind boggled that even banks do not allow complex passwords. The use of long phrases can help. For example "Phil and Bill went up the hill to fetch a bucket of blood1938." should be really hard to crack. The ASC11 symbols are also a great way to build a really complex password. I can understand why small companies do not have software that is long or complex password tolerant but major businesses should all be so equipped. Long phrase passwords should require so much effort to crack that almost nobody would even try and they can be really easy to remember as well.

Re:It's Them, Not Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget it. My bank requires the use of a hardware device to log in. First I have to insert my bank card and enter it's pin. Then I enter a 10 digit code taken from the banks site (a new code appears every time you need to authenticate) I enter this into the hardware device and it gives me a second 10 digit code. I then input my user name plus the 10 digit code and I can log in.

Passwords are not a good idea for banking !

Or: Use a password hasher / generator

[baadfood]

A password hasher takes a password that you can remember, the domain you need the password for and cryptographically hashes them together to generate a secure, site specific, password.

There are browser plugins that can intercept your weak-used-a-lot password on webforms and replace them on the fly with the strong, per site, password.

Nothing is ever stored, all you do is remember a few easy to recall passwords.

Should You Use Password Managers?

[hcs_$reboot]

No. (Ian may now sleep in peace)

Re:Dont use lastpass

[BLKMGK]

I too use 1Password with DropBox integration vs their pay to play cloud service. I pay nothing and it updates DropBox which is accessible to all of my clients quickly. It can be used for secure notes and other things so all of those security questions that you do NOT put in truthful answers for can be remembered :) My passwords are generated by a different app and I use different passwords for nearly every site now. Get hacked once and you learn the hard way - took me an entire day to track down most of my accounts and fix them!

Someone below mentioned it leaking metadata through a .js file - that file doesn't exist on my DropBox, the .JS files that do don't contain anything cleartext.

Re:Dont use lastpass

[Anonymous Coward]

Lastpass has concerns because it actively stores your passwords in its own cloud. You don't know the encryption used, provably, and because Lastpass is a central storage point for passwords, it is an active target. This is in contrast to 1Password's storage on Dropbox or mSecure, where an attacker would have to attack a lot of cloud based users, as opposed to one basket with all the eggs in it.

Plus, with other utilities, one can use a very long, secure password for the cloud syncing (min 32 characters), and a short one on devices which have encryption and a mechanism for erasing. This way, one has easy access to their passwords, but an attacker who compromises a cloud account has to brute force a lot longer password. Lastpass is all about "just trust us". I prefer packing my own parachute and having separate cloud providers and endpoint encryption.

Be careful about leaks of your password database

[Vitus Wagner]

My personal choice:

1. Use password manager (I use KeePass, but other ones are no worse).
2. NEVER-NEVER-NEVER let your encrypted passwords database leak to server you don't own, like DrobBox, Google Drive and so on. Only direct rsync/scp from one machine you own to another one.
3. If you need to access some account from the machine you don't trust completely (such as your girlfriend computer - you may ultimately trust her good intention but be not so sure about her sysadmin skills), don't plug USB drive with your password database in. Open password manager on your phone or tablet look up the password you need and type it in untrusted computer by hand.

Re:Dont use lastpass

[mlts]

1Password also does something unique. It is able to store your Google Authenticator 2FA keys. That, and allow export in a text format, so you can input them into another authentication app if needed. There are other apps which can back up the 2FA keys like Authy, but the backups are only accessible to the app itself.

Yes, 1Password has had flaws, which were corrected, but it works well, and allows one to store the PW data on a cloud provider of choice.

What a dumb question

[Anonymous Coward]

This type of question "Should You Use Password Managers?" is so dumb, because the sentence assumes that it speaks with authority. Typical bs.

Re: Dont use lastpass

[Anonymous Coward]

I use lastpass and it works really well. With two factor authentication and both mobile and browser extensions it has balanced security with convenience. I could find something a lot more secure maybe but then it becomes far less convenient.

Re: Dont use lastpass

[ls671]

I assume you trust your IP TV too...

Re: Dont use lastpass

[ls671]

I have a new revolutionary service that beats all competition; we store all your passwords and all your money and belongings. Give me a cal ASAP please.

Re: Dont use lastpass

[chocky]

Dale's article is from October 22, 2015.
Changing to opvaults appears to have addressed the issue, which was with metadata and not actual password data.
Just sayin'.

+1 for 1Password

Padding as Security

[qbeukes]

Another technique for strengthening a password is simply to pad it generously. Probably one of the most secure passwords you can ever have is just 30-40 full stop characters. Because it's the least likely to get bruteforced. So if you have decided on some arbitrary password AsDeFeGeLe9, you can pad it to increase the length by 14 and multiply the security 1000-fold, as so: AsDeFeGeLe9.............. or AsDeFeGeLe9-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Don't remember passwords

[Anonymous Coward]

Enter a very long string of characters.

When you want to access again, just reset the password :)

Don't

[zmooc]

You only need password managers if you cannot remember your passwords. And you probably cannot remember your passwords because of ridiculous password requirements made up by people that don't read xkcd. Just avoid those systems and use long but easy to remember passwords. Problem solved.

Re:Don't

[dagarath]

it sounds great in theory, but the reality is that so many websites we interact with end up being accounts. Trying to remember complex passwords to 5 sites is one thing, 50 sites? 100sites? 500sites? Everyone will have their limit about how many they can reasonably remember.

Threat Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because something has been hacked doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. Consider your threat model (the EFF has a great page on this) for passwords. Which is more secure - writing your password on a sticky note and placing that on your computer or using a password safe that requires computing power no one is likely to expend to get into your match.com account?

Passbolt

[XmasterX]

I use and strongly recommend https://www.passbolt.com/

Use a physical BOOK to store them in

[Anonymous Coward]

I use an address book, which has letters along the edge of the pages, and write them down in there. Very easy. All my important passwords (i.e. for things where I use my real name, address, etc. not for forums where I use a junk e-mail address and a made up name) are at least 12 characters long, many are 20 characters long. There is no way I can remember them all, which is how it should be.
Why people can't just use a physical address book is beyond me. The only possible way somebody could ever get my passwords is if they burgled my house AND decided to spend their time in there, opening an address book, that clearly looks like an address book. Burglars are not going to do that, they are looking for money, jewellery, and valuable electric items they can carry away and sell easily. Burglars don't spend their time going through all the books on a shelf, etc.
Use a physical address book and then you can't 'forget' your passwords, just keep the book by your computer all the time. How difficult is that?

Unfortunately it's apparently too difficult for most people. I have so many friends who actually ask ME what their password is for Ebay, or whatever, as if I must somehow know, because I'm a computer 'whizz', and they aren't. This is after I've told them numerous times to buy an address book, or ANY notebook, and write down their passwords, and keep it by their PC. Or told them to write their passwords on a sticker and stick it UNDER their computer table. How could they possibly lose that? But none of them ever do it. Too much effort, I presume.

Re:Dont use lastpass

[Anonymous Coward]

1. They leave some data unencrypted.
2. They lie about it.

No.

[Trogre]

Never store important passwords electronically.

By all means use the password manager built into your browser for very low security systems if you like the convenience.

Of Course!

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes it easier for the CIA to get all your passwords at once

2017

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 2017, this shouldn't even be a question. Neither was it in 2016.

Of course you must use a password manager, a local one for better security. Share the password db with your devices using any file syncing service, provided that the password db is encrypted (it should always be) and you make modifications only on one device, usually your laptop.

passwords?

[Anonymous Coward]

you should not use passwords anyway.

you know they store a hash when there's no limit

[Anonymous Coward]

hashed storage doesn't limit char lengths.

For the Executor

[BirdBrained]

Another good reason for using a password manager has to do with death. The executor of my estate has my master pass phrase to the LastPass account with all my financial and social account details. Should I die (when I die), it will be a simple matter for him to clean up my estate. I also have the master password for my Dad's online password manager, as I'm his executor. These passwords are stored offline and not easily recognized as a pass phrase.

Apple iCloud Keychain

[kiwioddBall]

Apple iCloud Keychain for me. I don't trust LastPass etc etc because they are smaller 3rd party solutions funded on a budget, one day they'll be hacked. Apple have infinite $ so I trust they are throwing tons of resources at keeping iCloud Keychain secure. Non Apple OS's are excluded of course, but that isn't an issue for me.

Re:Dont use lastpass

[zopper]

Or 3. You lie. Source?

Keep a hints database

[Anonymous Coward]

Hacks can happen. Services get compromised. Details linked.

If you store your full password some where, some how, it can be found and be compromised.

Even if it is only in your head (hello torture). Not much we can do about that one...

All of these solutions posted above, Keepass, passwordsafe, are still potentially vulnerable precisely because they have everything an attacker needs to know.

You need to have strong passwords. preferably long, complex strings. Oh but remembering them is so hard (queue As Seen on TV sound effect). or even better, oh but some websites are archaic and force me to use only 12 character and have all manner of string characters boohooohooo.

I don't store full passwords anywhere except my head. I have similar categories of passwords as mentioned above: A few variations of cheap throw away (forum) account passwords, a few complex alphanumerics to deal with dumb websites, and special/unique long complex multi word strings for high value websites.

I have a cloud based location with a file that I use to store password hints/reminders/triggers. No hacker is going to figure out even a short character password from clues that do not include any details on the # of characters or what they are... but, of course i can look at a cryptic clue (of my own creation) and say right I need to use the 1qa password here.

The only vulnerability I can't fix with this is brute force, but that's why you have multiple levels of passwords on their own.

Fraunhofer Institute

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys just published a paper on all the badly-implemented password managers on Android. It's worth a read, if only to give you some clues about what to look for in your own solution, whether on Android or not.

Re:Dont use lastpass

[Titanek]

+1 for 1Password.

I would have said the same a month ago, but 1Password is changing their pricing to $36 a year subscription.

I'm switching to LastPass.

Actually, the subscription thing was introduced a year ago. You can still opt for the standalone one-time license though. Response on a support ticket on their site:

Password standalone licences are still available for sale; our subscription accounts offer many advantages compared to a standalone licence, and so for almost everyone a subscription account is the best way to go.

One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bin

[artoo-uk]

. and of course there is a dark side to it.. Answer for me is yes though.. Pass (https://www.passwordstore.org/) does it nicely with great GIT integration.

I pay to use Dashlane

[devlp0]

with browser and android integration. I'm only frustrated that the browser plugin is not available for firefox on android.

Stanford PwdHash

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Stanford PwdHash and I keep a file listing sites, user IDs and password hints.

The only issue I've ever had is sometimes the generated password doesn't meet a site's requirements (e.g. too long, missing special characters) so I either retry with a different site password or note changes in my file.

Should You Use Password Managers?

[fyngyrz]

There are two cases, physically secure, and not:

If you're physically secure, you can use a simple notebook. This is unhackable from the network, and allows you to keep distinct passwords for everything. You can also use a separate desktop with no network communications and a password manager in this case, but of course that's much more expensive and generally requires more desk space. Backups become an issue as well. Whereas a notebook... other than physical disaster like fire or flood, quite robust. A phone is network connected whether you want it to be or not, whether the phone number is active or not, whether it's in airplane mode or not. State actors (and highly sophisticated private ones) can get into any even slightly recent phone that still has antennas and a live battery. So don't use a phone. Of course, if your computer is hacked, then any password you type in after the hack should be considered immediately compromised, because it probably is.

If you're not physically secure, but are concerned about real security and on a low or zero budget, then optimally, you won't be surfing all over the place, and will limit the number of passwords you need to the places you actually need to go. Then you can probably hold them in your own memory.

If you can't do that, then you may want to consider a robust safe, or a desk with professional level security, which basically means, it has a safe in it that can't be gotten out of it without making a noticeable disturbance. An alarm system backing this up is a good idea.

If you can't arrange for a safe, then we're down to password managers. The problem with a password manager is that typically everything depends upon a single access sequence; so in this case, you'd better be sure that your access to the manager is quite difficult. Which is annoying. But still best practice. You also need to hope there isn't some kind of back door that whoever you are concerned about has access to. Personally, I don't put much stock in such a hope. Admittedly, I'm a cynic.

It's worth talking about what "physically secure" means here. In the case of most law-abiding individuals, no one cares enough to ever come to your place and physically access your passwords. You are secure by default from external threats. Although you should consider family and friends. If there is any actual reason to worry about external threats, then you're part of this next case regarding physical security:

In the case of a person or organization with access to serious computing resources or valuable data, physical security means robust physical locks at the very least, escalating through guards, alarm systems, timed access, and so forth. You should consult professionals if you want this to really be effective. Protip: If you think you know how to get this handled, that's more likely a sign that you really should consult professionals than it is that you don't need them.

Network security for valuable data is also a very good idea if it can be implemented. This means that the network that the data is on, isn't linked to any network that connects to the WAN, and of course is not physically accessible to anyone not authorized to use it.

Large data sets with very low access rates can be airgapped by humans; request comes in for data, properly vetted human authorizes it, physically fetches the data from an off-WAN system, and moves it physically to the on-WAN system. This is expensive and slow, but serves very well to prevent wholesale loss of the large data set.

If your data is only used in-house, then neither the data source or the clients should be WAN connected, and users should be vetted and physically access-limited to whatever degree is required.

Most of this stuff is not really too hard, and you can of course take a swing at it yourself, but if it's other people's data you're dealing with rather than only putting yourself at risk... I still say consult professionals. And be prepared to spend money like it's water.

From the other end: the very le

pass: the standard unix password manager

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.passwordstore.org/

Stores passwords as gnupg encrypted in a git repo, that you _can_ push to a publicly reachable repo, _if_ you want to synchronize. Works well with dmenu, has a firefox extension, a chrome plugin, can run on Android (with OpenKeychain and Forker) and iOS, and many other options.

A little book

[admiral snackbar]

I don't need a password manager. I have a little book in my home where I write down user names and passwords for all important websites I use. Try and hack that. Fat chance anyone would ever break into my home and take it, so it's worth the risk to me.

3 can keep a secret, if 2 of them are dead....

[Anonymous Coward]

- Ben Franklin. Either he really said that. or he wrote it in his Poor Richard's almanac. Or the internet lies.

But the idea is sound. If you want your password to remain secure. Don't Tell ANYONE. Not your wife/husband, not your dog, not your brother/sister, not your boss. Don't tell strangers you meet on the the way to work. Don't tell the taxi driver.

And -- Don't tell strange companies who's financial success is dubious and who will eventually be forced to consider ways they can make money with the assets they control - ie, your passwords. they might end up selling them off, for all you know. yes /tinfoil-hat and all, but if you don't give them the password, then there's 100% chance it won't happen.

Hash

[Anonymous Coward]

For sites that allow long passwords (looking at you PayPal...), I use a SHA-1 hash composed of a common passphrase and a token unique to the service.
For example, if my passphrase was, "ILoveDogs", I'd combine that with something like the name of the site or service, like "/." Take a hash of the combined string, and use that for your password:
$ echo -n ILoveDogs/. | shasum
e157052633a0f658c9c0dd3f8a55e5ae8f49f2b7 -

For twitter, I might use:
$ echo -n ILoveDogstwitter | shasum
18dd3dd587f906b94d38154a525458dab8adb67e -

Note that these will remain in your bash history, so you should enable having history not remembering commands if your preface them with a space, and then preface your password generating command with a space.

NSA not a concern

[mu51c10rd]

the NSA can see them on the reflections on your eyes :)

The NSA analysts are more concerned about their jilted ex-lovers to worry about you...

why complicate things?

[Anonymous Coward]

use memorized unique passwords for the few important websites and 1 generic password for all non important accounts (forums, etc...). let's be honest, majority are accounts nobody would care about in case these are compromised or locked out. we just register a new account and cry 5minutes for having lost our e-penis post count kudos

SQRL?

[chubs]

Maybe we just get rid of passwords altogether and use applications that use an alternative authentication method like SQRL.

Yes, self-hosted, hw token, quality passphrase

[Anonymous Coward]

I interact with customers that have moderately high security requirements, and for my own liability protection I strive to ensure I implement stronger security policy on my own self and systems than they require of me. You can ramp up password security quite a bit without creating too much of a nuisance in day to day use.

You have to use a password database. Here's why:

- Human generated passwords are notoriously insecure. Good passwords have to be truly random. Google "correct horse battery staple" for the excellent xkcd post on the subject.

- You want separate passwords for each site. A successful attack on one compromises all your other accounts that use that password, or variations of it.

- Humans memory is limited. I have over 1500 entries in my password database right now.

To use a password database effectively:

- Use a good password database manager that uses quality encryption. I use pass (password-store.org) which uses GnuPG for cryptography operations. pass doesn't encrypt the password entry names -- if you care, place the password database directory on an encrypted disk, volume, or directory (encfs is nice).

- Always generate a new, unique, long and random password for each new site/account to store in the password database.

- Use two-factor authentication to access the password database. I use a Yubico key in smart card mode; my GnuPG private key material (2K or 4K RSA keys) is only available on the token, and there is no known way to extract the private keys short of an X-ray microscope.

- Use a very good passphrase for the hardware token. I find 8 word Dicewords passphrases are easy enough to memorize without writing them down, and they provide over 100 bits of entropy (which is quite good). I prefer the EFF dictionary. Be sure to use a truly random set of words; don't self select!

- Never store your password database on a server or service directly connected to the public internet. I don't think the convenience is worth the risk. This means no Dropbox, no LastPass, no VPS, etc.

- Never store your password database on a smartphone. Google "Carrier IQ" for one of several issues that should lead you to the conclusion that you can't trust your phone OS with secure information.

- Don't ever use your hardware token on a computer that you don't trust. Since the passphrase is entered on the computer keyboard and passes over USB to the token, there are several ways a malicious actor with access to that computer could steal your passphrase.

Pro tips:

- Use gpg-agent to reduce the number of times you have to manually input the token's passphrase. gpg-agent has been vetted pretty well. This reduces the hassle factor without presumably decreasing security.

- Use the GnuPG SSH agent to use the keys on your hardware token to secure shell to servers you work with. GnuPG can encrypt additional SSH keys stored on disk if you prefer to have a separate set of SSH keys for public services like Github or VPSes.

- Use passmenu and xdotool with pass to provide a powerful and fast search capability that types the selected password directly into whatever has keyboard focus. This avoids using the insecure system clipboard for temporary password storage.

- Pass uses Git to store an audit log of changes to the password database. Make a backup of your pass database by simply pushing to a remote (using SSH, with key not password) that is under your physical control. Don't allow a Git viewer to access your remote to avoid alternative download methods.

- For very high security information, such as in my case customer system access, use a separate 8 word Dicewords passphrase and don't store it in the password database. I find that I can remember a number of Dicewords passwords simultaneously as long as I use them semi-regularly.

Obligatory xkcd

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.xkcd.com/936/

Single point of attack?

[no1nose]

Wouldn't a password manager be a good single point to attach for someone trying to get your information? Sites, usernames and passwords, all in one neat file.

Heres how to Keypass on the cloud....safely

[tacokill]

Use cryptomator on your cloud of choice (google drive, dropbox, whatever). Cryptomator sets up an encrypted volume on cloud drives, much like Truecrypt and Veracrypt. Now store your keypass.db file in that encrypted volume container instead of nakedly on the cloud drive. Bonus: Cloud drives, Cryptomator, and Keypass are all available on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android

From a workflow perspective, you enter your cryptomator password to open the encrypted folder and then you will enter your Keypass master password to open Keypass. If you are lazy, you can save the Cryptomator pass so it opens every time and just enter the Keypass password. This is particularly helpful for phones.

Sidenote: I am not affiliated with any of the above. Just a happy user that it all works so nice together -- and across my many devices.

nope

[swschrad]

single point of failure, not controlled by the user. now a looseleaf binder in the bottom of a drawer, that's fully controllable. unless theire's a fire, which would also destroy a password manager on the hard drive.

Better solution idea

[tacokill]

Instead of storing your keypass file directly on the clous drive, have you considered using Cryptomator? (or another similar tool). It creates an encrypted container on your cloud drive where you can store your keypass.db file.

I am sure Keypass crypto is strong but I don't like the idea of storing naked Keypass db files in the cloud. Bad actors are just one password away from the keys to the kingdom. With cryptomator (or similar), they would have to also decrypt the container file before they could even get to keypass db.

Decision Tree

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems obvious to me that there's no one 'best' solution, since there's many contexts in which passwords are needed. My physical location is highly (but not perfectly) secure. The risk of storing my PWs on my machine or in the cloud and having them compromised is far higher, I believe, than having them physically stolen. People on wired home LANs (are there any of those anymore?) have a different risk profile than people who do only cloud computing & storage. The optimum solution depends on your circumstances, including what you have to lose and how secure your devices are.

Re:Be careful about leaks of your password databas

[Anonymous Coward]

And why #2?
If you don't believe in the security of strong encryption then you can't have faith in SSL, PGP, AES, etc.

Easy alternative to dictionary words

[gordguide]

A simple alternative to using simple dictionary passwords (appropriately, eg to unlock a more secure password manager) is to get out a map of the world, pick some region you are willing to become familiar with, and choose the name of a town or other small, obscure feature.

You will always be able to re-read that passphrase if forgotten, by searching the same regional map, and it almost certainly won't be in a language dictionary (assuming you choose wisely) as cities and town are normally not included in dictionaries save for large, well known ones.

So, instead of Zagreb (Capital city of Croatia), perhaps choose a small town near there that isn't a Croatian dictionary word, and use that. Say, "Sesvete"

Check that it isn't a dictionary word (with a Crotian dictionary) ... you don't want a town whose English translation is "Brother", for example. It will be in the dictionary.

It might take a half hour of playing around to get a decent example, but after that you have a non-dictionary word you can remember, that few, if any, others will guess, and of moderate complexity. You could also use it as a component of a more complex password that has the usual features (uppercase + lowercase + numerals + symbols).

I would only trust a Password Manager I did myself

[flajann4415]

Any popular form of centralized password repo will become a magnet for being cracked. Better is to have something decentralized and directly under your control. Maybe something you can wear on your wrist or around your neck, and can interface with your devices via some sort of secure low-power BlueTooth connection.

If you want to implement such a beast, feel free to do so. Count it as "Open Source IP". :p I personally use longish passwords that might be difficult for most people to remember, and wish most places that accept passwords would allow for more flexibility. Someone already mentioned that a lot of sites hamper the password's max size and require a mix of different type of characters. And there is no consistent rule between sites on this, either. Probably the best approach would be to rely on multi-factor authentication. And if it's good enough for a gaming site like Steam, it should be good enough for everyone.

Something is better than nothing.

[dagarath]

If you are posting in this thread and you have a password plan already.. you are years ahead of most users. If you like a complex password algorithm where you create unique passwords for everything and remember the pattern, that probably works. . If you like a password manager, whether it stores locally or in the cloud, again that probably works and you are doing better than at least 90% of users.

If you don't have a password plan, your password is probably already compromised.

Am I autistic?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting as AC so obviously yes I'm slightly autistic, but I mean I'm not rain man or anything.

What exactly do people do with these things? Are there people who are really not able to remember passwords?

I use random password generators, and usually go with 14 characters unless the service doesn't allow something that long, and I have less than 20 of them to keep track of, so I just remember them.

What would a password manager do for me, everyone says they should be used, I just don't know for what.

Pass man + 2FA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah you should use a password manager. And 2 (or mutli) factor authentication. Surprised it wasn't mentioned, but I didn't read all comments.

Easiest Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems my solution is unique among Slashdotters. I use the same password for every site (with slight variations for stupid password rules). I vary the user name and email address.

Re:Dont use lastpass

[SensitiveMale]

Actually, the subscription thing was introduced a year ago. You can still opt for the standalone one-time license though.

1Password is moving to an all subscription pricing model. If someone has purchased 6 they'll receive all updates to 6, but that's it.

From Dave Teare directly "So no, I will not promise that 1Password 7 or 8 will allow licenses to be used instead of memberships. These releases are too far in the future to make any promises about."

Re:Dont use lastpass

[Titanek]

Actually, the subscription thing was introduced a year ago. You can still opt for the standalone one-time license though.

1Password is moving to an all subscription pricing model. If someone has purchased 6 they'll receive all updates to 6, but that's it.

From Dave Teare directly "So no, I will not promise that 1Password 7 or 8 will allow licenses to be used instead of memberships. These releases are too far in the future to make any promises about."

Yes iPassword 6 and later are subscription based, but iPassword 4 isn't going out of support, according to John M in support:

When we debuted our subscription service in late 2015, we didn't have a Windows app that was capable of talking to our service. Windows had also undergone a lot of technological improvements since development of 1Password 4 had started, so we decided to start fresh with a new codebase. We also took the opportunity to jump a version number or two, and name the new app "1Password 6" to match our other platforms; we figured the tradeoff of a little confusion for existing customers was worth reducing confusion for all future customers. 1Password 6 for Windows is still in active development along-side 1Password 4 for Windows - one supported app for subscription customers, one supported app for licence customers.

Wine for macOS

[tepples]

I thought Wine, an mostly binary compatible free reimplementation of Win32, was available for macOS. If you need to share between a key file, and KeePass for macOS cannot import databased from KeePass for Windows, try running KeePass for Windows in Wine for macOS.

Running on localhost, saved on a tcrypt partition

[Anonymous Coward]

Online password managers are a no no, except installed locally for a company on secure server, only accessible on the internal company lan, and using strict least access to ration passwords to employees as needed, and to rotate them.

Do no use public password managers.

Keepass, Keepass2, and related family of password managers are recommended. I also recommend saving the keepass file on an otherwise encrypted disk like a tcrypt partition, or whole disk encryption.

Re: Dont use lastpass

[Rakarra]

Ok, so you have FUD. FUD is fine as long as it's accurate, but do we have some sort of proof to point to here?

Watchtower... I know that name...

[tepples]

I don't have strong enough words to endorse their Watchtower service

I'd hope it doesn't have quite as much confused theology as that other Watchtower service.

KeePass and nothing else

[Anonymous Coward]

KeePass. The only I trust: opensource, without subscription and NOT stored in the cloud. (multi plaftorm too. I run it in windows and linux)

Re:Dont use lastpass

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol enjoy your early vulnerability panic :-D

Re:Dont use lastpass

[Anonymous Coward]

*yearly lol

Re: Dont use lastpass

[slashdotwannabe]

cite?

Re:Dont use lastpass

[slashdotwannabe]

I use Dashlane. On three desktops, ipad, iphone and android. It syncs seamlessly across all my devices and gives me fine grain control over how secure I want individual passwords to be both when generating and when using them.