[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.

[tialaramex]

You are, alas, not unusual in mistaking the autofill feature, which ordinary users are told is about convenience, for a security measure.

In the real world users go "Huh, why didn't my autofill work? Oh well, I'll copy it by hand".

A "key logger" logs keypresses. That's all key loggers do. There are lots of interesting scenarios that enable key logging. You've imagined some radically more capable attack, in which you get local code execution on someone's computer, and then for reasons best known to yourself you've decided that somehow counts as a "key logger". I can't help you there, except to recommend never going anywhere near security.