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.

keepass

[Anonymous Coward]

http://keepass.info/

Re:keepass

[sexconker]

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

Re:keepass

[war4peace]

KeepAss keeps your ass secure.

Re:1Password

[Anonymous Coward]

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

But my god are they beautiful to look at.

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.

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]

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

[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".