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by seaurchin 2562 days ago
I'd love a dumbed-down answer to this. Here's where I think 1Password's TOTP is useful:

User creates a strong password in 1Password when signing up for a service. The password is used only for this service. The service stores all usernames and passwords in plaintext. These credentials are compromised without the service knowing. If I'm using 1Password's TOTP then, I think, an attacker is prevented from logging into the service with my credentials. If I'm not using 1Password's TOTP then the attacker can login to the service.

2 comments

If the service is compromised, you can't trust your TOTP secret (the little binary string from which your TOTP codes are generated) either! The protections TOTP provide in this scenario are all based on magical thinking; that it "feels" secure. But really, with respect to a specific service, if they're compromised, your credentials are worthless and need to be reset wholesale.
It should be noted that the TOTP secret is probably kept in the same database (if not the same table) as the password hashes. I'm surprised we don't see more TOTP secrets in password dumps.