Hello everyone, what is your go-to password manager? What would you suggest for friends and family that aren’t very tech savvy?
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Bitwarden.
I used Bitwarden for a long time and it was easy and convenient. I’ve since switched to KeePassXC which is less convenient, but it’s more private and secure because it’s offline. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone less tech savvy unless they are just going to need access to their passwords on one device as setting it up reliably with a cloud solution isn’t always simple.
Bitwarden has always worked great for me on android.
i’ve used 1password forever and have the family plan for my mum and dad and they’re fine with it. plus it’s canadian not american.
Good thing Canada isn’t going elbows down, bend over and creating a regime for secret orders that weaken encryption and give warrantless access to your data in an effort to appease Trump.
Pass or qtpass if you need gui. Simple and efficient.
Keepass and Bitwarden respectively. Keepass has a lot of fringe advantages but most important to me is automation and offline consistency. Bitwarden will let you stay logged in offline depending on the options but it’s a bit different and they offer some kind of premium service. They both have good Android apps and Firefox addons
Bitwarden
Bitwarden is great!
Bitwarden with self-hosted Vaultwarden.
Bitwarden with self-hosted Vaultwarden is great!
Bitwarden if you share accounts between two devices, keepass if just one.
Not just between devices. Between people, too. Super handy to coordinate shared passwords. I use it with my wife for utilities and stuff.
You can also designate other Bitwarden accounts to have the ability to reset your master password, in case of emergency. So my wife has a password she can use to get in there, in case something happens to me. But people can’t do it on the sly, because it’ll notify the account holder of its use.
KeypassXC for sus stuff and Bitwarden for everything else.
you don’t have to be very tech savy to use a password manager. I use a keypass variant for local ones and keep important ones there and bitwarden online with stuff that if it got taken over would not matter.
Proton Pass, I use the full suite so it’s just convenient. It also has a few nice functions like e-mail aliases and secure password share links.
Let the proton haters come👀.
Firefox
Can’t tell if serious.
Give me reasons to not use firefox’s pw manager and I’ll jump back to bitwarden
As a general rule, browser based password storage is less secure than a standalone offering. While convenient, Firefox loads the cipher into memory. and stores passwords in a local file (logins.json) encrypted with 3DES (older versions) or AES (newer), using a key derived from an optional primary password. Without a primary password, Firefox uses a blank key, making it trivially decryptable. Even with one, decryption occurs locally but lacks the layered, zero-knowledge design of something like Bitwarden. This makes Firefox stored passwords more vulnerable to something like a virus outbreak on your computer, which can access your Firefox stored passwords.
This is how I understand it. If someone has better intel, or if I need schooled up, do share.
Thank you for taking the time to write this
You are welcome. Anytime. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I do like to help.
Even if all the rest were true, what virus outbreak would affect me on Linux?
I am basically relaying conventional wisdom I have gleaned over the years of ‘best practice’. I also forget that a lot of people in the privacy sphere run Linux solely, where as I run Windows, Linux, and Mac. I hold no high ground in privacy, security, or anonymity. You are certainly within spec to run your network as your requirements deem necessary. I’m just a lot more comfortable not using a browser to store my passwords. If you’ve got it all down to a note, then rock on my brother and don’t let them give you shit about your ponytail either.
You seem to be much more knowledgeable on the topic, and while I would call myself privacy conscious, I would hardly consider myself within the pricacy sphere. How would using something like bitwarden or keepassxc work with entering passwords on websites? Firefox just retrieves it from its vault (as bad as it may be from what I’m reading) and then inserts it into the u/p fields. I’ve seen LastPass in action plenty, because corporations seem to love it, and I find it anything but seemless. So how do those two aforementioned compare?
You seem to be much more knowledgeable on the topic,
Well, the first thing you need to know about me is that I am an expert at nothing. I’ve just been screwing up enough computers since the mid 70s to learn a couple things. LOL
Some thoughts and opinions:
Firefox: As mentioned earlier, Firefox stores it’s logins in a file called logins.json, which is encrypted. It stores the encryption keys in a separate file called key4.db. They are encrypted with 3DES in CBC mode for the passwords themselves. When you save a password, Firefox encrypts it before writing it to disk. If you don’t create a master password in Firefox, the browser uses a basic form of encryption based on your operating system credentials or a default key. This allows Firefox to automatically decrypt your passwords for autofill purposes without requiring any extra authentication, as long as you’re logged into your device. The master password is key, because with the master password Firefox adds a stronger cipher in the form of PBKDF2-SHA256. Without the master password, anyone using your browser can fill in log information.
Bitwarden: Bitwarden is a dedicated, separate, password manager that stores your vault data in the cloud on Microsoft Azure in the US or EU regions iirc. Bitwarden has zero-knowledge of your passwords or encrypted data. You start with a master password, much like you would with Firefox. That master password is never sent to Bitwarden. Here’s where my eyes start to glaze over. LOL It undergoes key stretching using PBKDF2-SHA-256 with 600,000 iterations. This derives a 256-bit master key, which is then expanded via HKDF to a 512-bit stretched master key. A separate 512-bit symmetric key generated by CSPRNG, is encrypted with this stretched key and stored on the servers as your ‘protected symmetric key’. Your passwords are individually encrypted using AES-256-CBC with HMAC-SHA256 for integrity, each with its own unique cipher key that’s further protected by your symmetric key. When you log in, the master password re-derives the keys client-side to decrypt the protected symmetric key fetched from the server, and decryption happens only in memory and is never written to disk. I’m not going to even pretend to thoroughly understand the process. That’s going to take someone way more intelligent than I. LOL
Firefox password system is browser based. Firefox does not mandate a master password like Bitwarden, or at least in the past has not. Firefox stored passwords, as mentioned earlier, are susceptible to Firefox based exploits. Those exploits are not relegated to just Windows platforms, and can happen on Linux and Mac just by visiting a laced up website. Bitwarden is device agnostic and invokes more encrypted protections than it’s Firefox counterpart.
To boil the ox down to the bullion cube, Bitwarden, in my humble opinion, gives you more layers of protection than your standard Firefox browser. I like layers. They do add complexity to the situation, but at times, complex layers is just what is required. At the end of the day, it gets down to what you feel comfortable with based on your threat model. Both options offer encryption and security features. Both options are reasonably secure, with Bitwarden being, in my mind, far more secure because it offers more robust layers of complexity. Bitwarden has a fabulous track record of security, and tho there have been previous breaches, none to my knowledge ever revealed any user data.
It has been quite a while since I have used LastPass briefly, so I cannot speak with intelligence about it’s operation. I do know that Bitwarden is super easy (for me) to use and in the browser, works like any other password storage option. You can set it to automatically fill in passwords and user names which is a feature I think appeals to those who use Firefox or other browser based password storage systems. However, as I stated, at the end of the day, it all gets down to what aligns with your threat model, and how comfortable you feel using the options you have chosen. For me, Bitwarden offers more layers of protection, and I am a green ogre who likes layers.
Built-in password managers in software like browsers and operating systems are sometimes not as good as dedicated password manager software. The advantage of a built-in password manager is good integration with the software, but it can often be very simple and lack privacy and security features that standalone offerings have.
For example, the password manager in Microsoft Edge doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption at all. Google’s password manager has optional E2EE, and Apple’s offers E2EE by default.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/passwords/
Why is the built-in password manager disabled?
Use a external password manager, it’s more secure.
Used it for years before switching to bitwarden (because I needed more? I dont remember).
Absolutely usable and maybe the best browser pw Manager.
Also using one is better than none
BitWarden. All day everyday. Every human
Keepass or bust
Bitwarden, DON’T self host.
Why not self host?
Because if it’s something that’s vital, you should just pay to have someone else host it. ESPECIALLY if it’s a nominal cost per year.
Porque no los dos?
Thanks for answering. I don’t self host it but am interested. It’s still a company that i entrust to store highly sensitive data with, hence my interest in self hosting. Usually folks promote self hosting, so i was curious about your comment to not. Agree, that’s not something to consider lightly.
