[iainmerrick]

You’re right, of course, but this reminds me of when Chrome didn’t obscure your passwords when looking at its autofill settings. The developers argued that it would just be security by obscurity -- if somebody has access to your computer when it’s unlocked, they can do anything they want, so obscuring your passwords does nothing.

The counter-argument is, even if it’s not perfectly secure, that extra bit of friction before you can see the passwords is useful, and may just save your bacon if a casual thief has access to your computer for a few seconds.

The Chrome team eventually saw sense and added some client-side password protection.

As long as you don’t only have client-side protections, of course (and maybe your clueless auditors were making that mistake).

[halJordan]

He's definitely wrong. If you want to see why this is wrong you should look at what Kaspersky had to do to unravel Operation Triangulation. They did, eventually, succeed but the absolute nightmare they went through should simply inform you why its a good thing.