[Hackbraten]

I’ve been observing this space for two decades and haven’t come across a single open-source password manager that actually works, is properly maintained, has an acceptable security track record, and comes with a similarly well-maintained browser extension that protects both my clipboard and myself from phishing.

[rpdillon]

I've been using Keepass for two decades and have never had a single issue. I would never recommend a browser plug in (too much attack surface area), and instead simply check the URL before having KeePass autotype. No clipboard.

I think you're rejecting good solutions out of hand.

Meanwhile...millions of users trusted LastPass. Twice.

[Hackbraten]

> simply check the URL before having KeePass autotype.

I’m not going to rely on myself never making a mistake. I want a solution that protects me even during stressful moments where I have a lapse of judgement and forget to check.

[simoncion]

If you're not using KeepassXC's browser plugin (or are using KeePassX, which -IIRC- never had a browser plugin), then its autotype feature will check the title of the window that has keyboard focus when deciding which entry to use. If one or more matches are found, it will [1] also ask you to confirm which entry you're about to have the software punch in. If no matches are found, it will alert you to that fact.

You might find the KeePassXC docs about the feature [0] to be informative.

If you're going to complain that all a phisher has to do to capture a password is create a website with the same title as the official one, then my reply would be something like "Duh. That's what the browser plugin is for.".

[0] <https://keepassxc.org/docs/KeePassXC_UserGuide#_auto_type>

[1] ...optionally, and on by default...

[Hackbraten]

Not sure how you got the impression that I was unwilling to use a browser plugin.

I’m absolutely looking for a browser plugin. I would refuse to use an auto-type feature that only checks the window title instead of, as a browser plugin would do, the site’s domain.

[simoncion]

I'm not sure how you got the impression that I had the impression that you're unwilling to use a browser plugin. I have absolutely no idea whether or not you're willing to use a browser plugin.

I was mentioning how auto-type worked because it's useful information for those who either are unwilling to use a browser plugin, or are like myself and simply have no need for one.

[rpdillon]

I don't think fixing this at the browser-level is the right place. In general, I'm very vigilant, but I know I can be tricked. So I have a policy about not clicking links in emails from companies I already know the address for. I also aggressively right click / long tap links to examine the URL before opening.

In general, opening a malicious URL exposes the user to unnecessary risk, so the correct solution is not to assume the user has visited a malicious site (since that would already be high-risk), but rather to prevent opening of malicious URLs. The most obvious solution is to treat any untrusted content as questionable. So I very carefully examine every domain I visit - as I say to my kids: have a model about who owns the computer you're talking to. Domains matter.

Now, this works for me. I'm not cognitively impaired, I have high conscientiousness, probably from working in military and classified defense contexts way back when, but I'm not really sure to be honest, could just be my personality. But it works for me.

I get that you want that extra safeguard, but it's just not a dealbreaker for me, especially since I'm highly suspicious of browser add-ons and the security implications they bring in. I guess I'm just extremely selective about what add-ons I'll use.

[simoncion]

rpdililon mentioned KeePass. What have you (that is, Hackbraten) found wrong with the KeePassXC offshoot of it?

/me wonders if this is a "recommend me a nice open source, offline password manager" question in disguise.

[Hackbraten]

I don’t remember why KeePassXC didn’t make my list last time I checked.

That was years ago, so I’m going to check it out again. Thanks for the pointer.

Update: One thing that stands out immediately is a confusing mess of three different projects, two of them unmaintained, which all call themselves KeePassX or KeePassXC, sometimes linking to each other’s documentation. How do I even tell I’m facing the correct KeePass(X(C)?)? project?

Yes, I’ll figure it out eventually but until then, it’s confusing. Also, if a password manager project needs to be forked over and over and over again (how can a holder of the keys to the kingdom possibly go MIA on three different occasions in basically the same project?), then does that tell us something about how the project is governed?

[simoncion]

> How do I even tell I’m facing the correct KeePass(X(C)?)? project?

Well, [0] lists a single project called KeePassXC, with [1] as its homepage. Search engines list [1] and [2] as the top results for the query KeePassXC, for whatever that's worth. [3]

> Also, if a password manager project needs to be forked over and over and over again ... then does that tell us something about how the project is governed?

No?

KeePass is Windows-only software. So, some folks decided to write KeePassX, which ran on Linux, OSX, and Windows. They got bored of that after a decade or so, called it quits, and one of the preexisting forks [4] became the widely-used one.

> how can a holder of the keys to the kingdom possibly go MIA on three different occasions in basically the same project?

In addition to the history I wrote above, you are aware that KeePass is still receiving stable releases? According to [5], it looks like 2.59 was released just last month.

EDIT: Actually, where are you getting this "confusing mess of three different projects" from? When I search for "keepass", I get the official home pages for KeePass and KeePassXC as the top two results, the Wikipedia page, and then the Keepass project's SourceForge downloads page. When I search for "keepassx", I get the official homepages for KeePassX and KeePassXC, the wikipedia page, the KeePassXC Github repo, and an unofficial SourceForge project page for KeePassX.

[0] <https://keepass.info/download.html>

[1] <https://keepassxc.org/>

[2] <https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/releases>

[3] And -because I'm a Linux user- not only do I have KeePassXC in my package manager, I also know that [1] is listed as its project homepage.

[4] ...which started like four years before KeePassX's final stable release...

[5] <https://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass/files/KeePass%202.x...>

[Hackbraten]

Thanks for taking the time to follow up.

When I searched for `keepassxc`, my search engine ranked eugenesan/keepassxc [0] higher than keepassxreboot/keepassxc [1], so the former was the first that I’d visit. GitHub says that eugenesan/keepassxc is 2693 commits ahead of keepassx/keepassx:master, so I assumed that eugenesan/keepassxc was a legitimate and meaningful fork of keepassx/keepassx. Maybe I’m entirely mistaken, and I was just tricked by a blunder of my search engine and eugenesan/keepassxc is just a random person’s fork? (But then again, if it’s just a random fork, then why does it show up at the top, and why so many commits ahead of keepassx?)

To add even more to the confusion, not only is eugenesan/keepassxc unmaintained, it also points to www.keepassx.org (why?), which in turn says it’s unmaintained, too.

If I was just mistaken and eugenesan/keepassxc is really just a random fork, then my earlier allegations are all moot. Thank you for clearing this up, and also for clarifying that the other (legitimate?) KeePassXC was a preexisting fork (so it would have been difficult for them and possibly even more confusing to users if they had taken over the abandoned KeePassX project).

[0]: https://github.com/eugenesan/keepassxc

[1]: https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc

[simoncion]

What search engine are you using?

I've tried DDG, Google, Bing, and Yandex. All of them rank official KeepassXC stuff in the top five results, and -with the exception of Bing- rank it above any other non-Wikipedia results. I didn't see this weird keepassx GitHub fork in the results from any of the search engines I tried.

> When I searched for `keepassxc`, my search engine ranked eugenesan/keepassxc [0] higher than keepassxreboot/keepassxc...

With the greatest of respect, I would expect someone who's sufficiently savvy to know what to do with a GitHub repo in their search result to also be sufficiently savvy to -at minimum- visit the homepage listed in the repo's About blurb and notice that [0] is the very first item in the list of "Latest News". I'd also expect that savvy someone to know to visit the repo's Releases page, notice that there are no published releases, and consider even more intensely that they might not be looking at the software they expected to see.

I can't explain why your search system is ranking this misleadingly-named GitHub repo so highly. AFAICT, noone with the repo owner's email address was ever involved in any public development on KeePassXC.

[0] <https://www.keepassx.org/index.html%3Fp=636.html>

[Hackbraten]

> What search engine are you using?

I’m using Kagi. They say they rely on several third-party search indexes. I can’t see which one they are using for which particular search request. What I do know is that the backends are of varying quality. However, after years and years of using Google (back when their search was still good), I got used to the fact that if they return a GitHub project as a top search result, then that project was usually meaningful.

> With the greatest of respect, I would expect someone who's sufficiently savvy to know what to do with a GitHub repo in their search result to also be sufficiently savvy to -at minimum- visit the homepage listed in the repo's About blurb and notice that [0] is the very first item in the list of "Latest News".

Forks sometimes don’t update the About blurb that they inherit, and I think that that’s exactly what happened in the bogus repo.

> I'd also expect that savvy someone to know to visit the repo's Releases page, notice that there are no published releases, and consider even more intensely that they might not be looking at the software they expected to see.

In this case, however, the Releases section said “13 tags.” Some projects don’t use GitHub’s Releases feature at all, and rely only on Git tags. It’s sometimes difficult to spot.

[odo1242]

What about Bitwarden?

[mangodrunk]

It’s annoying how people are gaslighting you into thinking this is a solved problem. As if password managers don’t have issues themselves and even if they did solve that aspect, it’s only a part of the whole problem.