[tptacek]

The website and the password manager in this scenario are storing the exact same secrets. If you're going to store them in a password manager, it is indeed reasonable to ask "why bother"?

TOTP is very useful! Just use a TOTP authenticator app on your phone, and don't put them in 1Password.

[SpaethCo]

> TOTP is very useful! Just use a TOTP authenticator app on your phone, and don't put them in 1Password.

I was fully in that camp before I started talking with friends on red teams that were allowed to actually start using realistic phishing campaigns. Now I'm fully in the "U2F, client certs, or don't bother" camp.

Maybe I'm jaded, but it feels like the exploit landscape has improved enough that TOTP is as hopeless as enabling WEP on a present-day wireless network. Not only does setting it up waste your time, you're presumably doing so because you have the false belief it will actually offer protection from something. It may have been useful at one point, but those days are disappearing in the rearview mirror.

The only place I see TOTP still offering value is for people who re-use passwords, but only because it becomes the single site-unique factor for authentication.

[tptacek]

U2F addresses phishing and password theft. TOTP just addresses password theft. That doesn't make TOTP useless; password theft is a serious problem, routinely exploited in the real world.

[jedberg]

But the secrets serve different purposes, they aren't the same. So why not keep them in the same place? I'll admit that it is less secure of course, since someone could compromise your 1Password. But it is still more secure that not using TPOP at all, is not?

Again, is there no attack vector that exists that makes TPOP worthwhile when you're already using a password manager that makes it not worthwhile if it's in your password manager?

[tptacek]

I'm not really sure I see how storing TOTP secrets in 1Password is materially any more secure than not using TOTP secrets and just letting 1Password generate a random password for that site.

[zzzeek]

a keylogger sniffs your password for site X, now they have your password for that site and can log in. If you also had a TOTP code, they can only log in for the next 30 seconds using that TOTP code, but they can't send out an email with your password in a CSV file to their friends and expect it to be usable.

I know I'm wrong because you know everything but I can't get past this particular one. unless the argument is, attackers aren't that lame anymore, then sure.

[tialaramex]

Best not to assume anyone is infallible. If you don't put people on pedestals you've got less cleaning up to do later when they inevitably fall off. Yes that includes you (and of course me).

2-3 minutes is more realistic for real sites than 30 seconds, because there is usually a margin allowed for clock skew. But yes each OTP expires and that's a difference for an attacker who doesn't know the underlying secret.

TOTP is also not supposed to be re-usable. A passive keylogger gets the TOTP code, but only at the same moment it's used up by you successfully logging in with it. Implementations will vary in how effectively they enforce this, but in principle at least it could save you.

Caveat: The system may issue a long-lived token (e.g. a session Cookie) in exchange for the TOTP code which bad guys _can_ trade unlike the token itself.

I think there's also a difference with passwords on the other side of the equation. If I get read access to a credentials database (e.g. maybe a stolen backup tape) I get the OTP secret and so I can generate all the OTP codes I need, but in a halfway competently engineered system I do not get the password, only a hash. Since we're talking about 1Password, this password will genuinely be difficult to guess, and guessing is the only thing I can do because knowing the hash doesn't get me access to the live system. In this case 1Password is protecting you somewhat while my TOTP code made no difference. If you have a 10 character mixed case alphanumeric password (which is easy with 1Password), and the password hash used means I only get to try one billion passwords per second, you have many, many years to get around to changing that password.

Still, FIDO tokens are very much a superior alternative, their two main disadvantages are fixable. Not enough people have FIDO tokens, and not enough sites accept them.

[Edited to make the password stuff easier to follow]

[Dylan16807]

The scenario of "attacker has a key logger but doesn't steal the entire password database" sounds like enough of an edge case to ignore. If someone's stealing data from my password manager I'm going to assume full compromise.

[tialaramex]

Do you have anything - statistics, examples of popular toolkits, something like that, to show this is actually just an "edge case" ?

In the threat scenario we're discussing bad guys aren't "stealing data from my password manager" they just have the password and OTP code that were filled out, possibly by hand. They can do this using the same tools and techniques that work for password-only authentication, including making phishing sites with a weak excuse for why the auto-fill didn't work. We know this works.

[Dylan16807]

> In the threat scenario we're discussing bad guys aren't "stealing data from my password manager" they just have the password and OTP code that were filled out, possibly by hand.

Possibly by hand? You are definitely not discussing the same scenario as everyone else. They're talking about password and OTP being stored in the same password manager, both filled out at the same time all in software.

A key logger is stealing those bytes right out of the password manager's buffers. It takes more sophistication to dump the database, but it's a very small amount more.

[jedberg]

Ok, so you don't see any use for TPOP when using 1Password then?

[subway]

The issue is with storing your TOTP secret in the same store as your password. The idea of using MFA is that multiple secret stores must be compromised in order to grant access to a service.

If you put your TOTP secret on your phone (or Yubikey), then both your TOTP secret store (that is your phone or keychain) and 1Password store must be compromised in order to gain access to your account. TOTP is useful in this scenario.

If you put your TOTP secret in 1Password along with your site password, then only your 1Password store needs to be compromised. This is the scenario where TOTP becomes pointless.

[ubercore]

Isn't that a less likely scenario? Or at least, a subset of the possible compromises, meaning you have materially improved your security in _some but not all_ cases. I don't disagree that it's best to not have TOTP in 1password, but isn't it still _better_ than not having TOTP at all?

[jedberg]

I understand that, but it isn't it still better to store it in 1Password than not have TPOP at all? At least you're still protected against other attacks, right?

[subway]

Marginally sure, but what "other attacks" are you looking to protect against?

Most MITM scenarios are going to result in giving up at least one TOTP code -- and that TOTP code will be used to obtain a long-lived HTTP session (I can't remember when Google last had me auth).

I think it's common for folks to think that TOTP means it's safe to lose a code because it is short-lived and invalidated when a subsequent code is used (usually), but it just takes one code for a long-lived session cookie to be obtained.

If an attacker is in the position to intercept your password via MITM, Phising, whatver, they're in position to intercept your TOTP code. They're not going to sit on that code -- they're going to immediately use it to obtain their long-lived session while reporting an error back to you.

[tptacek]

No, I use TOTP and I use 1Password. But my TOTP secrets live in Duo's iPhone application.

[jedberg]

And I also store them separately. But don't you agree that storing them in 1Password is still better than nothing, as there are still some use cases that you are protected against that way?

[tptacek]

No, that's where you lose me. If you're using 1Password to generate passwords in the first place, then I really don't see how using it for TOTP accomplishes anything. To me, it looks like you could literally concatenate the TOTP secret to the 1Pw-generated password and have the same level of security.

[manicdee]

How is that materially different to storing the password and TOTP in 1Password?

[tptacek]

Obviously, because if you compromise my desktop, you still won't have my TOTP secrets.

[tzs]

Do you see any problem with using a phone TOTP authenticator, but when setting it up saving a copy of the TOTP secret in a file encrypted with my public gpg key?

The idea is that if I lose access to my phone, I can decrypt that saved copy of the secret, and load it into 1Password temporarily until I get my phone back or get a new phone and get everything set back up.

[tptacek]

Before people started storing their TOTP secrets in desktop applications so they could auto-fill them in their browsers, this question used to be the front line of the 2FA opsec wars. I was a lieutenant in the army of "if you want to back up 2FA secrets, just enroll two of them; a single 2FA secret should never live in more than one place". I think that battle is already lost.

Lots of reasonable people back up their secrets, or even clone them into multiple authenticator applications. I try not to.

[Fnoord]

> Lots of reasonable people back up their secrets, or even clone them into multiple authenticator applications. I try not to.

Because if they lose access to the 2FA secrets, you lose access to your account. If that's just one account, recovery might be doable (depending on who ultimately is root on the machine). If its your Bitcoin wallet or FDE though, you're toast.

There's also a variety of protocols used for 2FA. I've seen: USB2, USB3, USB-C, BlueTooth, NFC.

As for how people do this: they use a second key, save their key on a cryptosteel(-esque) device [1] (IMO overpriced, YMMV), USB stick, a piece of paper, or gasp CDROM. Where its saved differs. Could be next to a bunch of USB sticks, in a safe, at a notary (my recommendation though does cost a dime or two), in a basement under a sack of grain, ...

[1] https://cryptosteel.com

[tptacek]

What the actual fuck is this "cryptosteel" thing?

[Fnoord]

There's a FAQ on the bottom of the page.

[tptacek]

I know, I read it. What the actual fuck is this? Who would spend money on this? How is this not an insane product concept?

[owaty]

> if you want to back up 2FA secrets, just enroll two of them

Could you elaborate on how you do this in practice?

[Tomte]

Just like the first one. Most U2F web sites let you register multiple keys.

Any one gives you access. So you take one with you and put one in a drawer at home.