The additional features this tool brings (port enumeration, list usb devices, system info), makes me thing the tool was not designed for good/ethical reasons, but to ease the life of infostealers that are usually distributed via Discord.
Is it even safe to use browser-integrated password managers? I think they're so much easier to use than external solutions such as KeepassXC, but if it's so easy to decrypt their databases...
Safari's absolutely. It uses a OS-wide keychain secured via hardware.
Does this prevent other software running on the same hardware from accessing the keychain?
E.g. on Windows, any program can access the entirety of the credential store for the current user.
Why is this surprising and why do you expect the situation with external password managers to be different? If you can decrypt it other software running on your computer can too.
A password manager integrated with the browser could be compromised by a vulnerability in the browser as well exploited by something running within the browser.
Well, unless there is zero integration with the browser, then it’s just a matter of time before some exploit will expose how to retrieve arbitrary information from the external tool.
And of course, the external tool can have plenty of exploitable leaks unrelated to whether or not it’s integrated to some browser.
If the goal is to have better security, no method of using password alone will bring significant improvement to an authentication system, no matter how great the password manager it’s used with.
> Well, unless there is zero integration with the browser, then it’s just a matter of time before some exploit…
Which is why my password manager has zero integration directly with the browser, or anything else for that matter. There is a tiny little bit of extra legwork caused by this⁰, but IMO it is a good compromise between convenience and easily available attack surface.
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[0] and it might be susceptible to attacks that manage to listen to the OS message queue & clipboard where a browser integrated method would not be, but once something is that far into your system there isn't much that is going to help you except maybe an orbital nuke.
Any tool can have leaks, but integration with an application that connects to large numbers of servers over the internet seems to be a huge increase in attack surface to me, compared to a password manager that is external to the browser.
That depends on how it is designed.
Is Firefox's designed in a way that prevents that?
Given it can automatically insert passwords for a site, something in the browser can access passwords.
What is your risk model? An attacker who can install cameras in your house to see your PIN/password? An attacker with a blunt object and the clear intent to harm you if you don't unlock your phone? Your spouse who you trust enough to loan your device to look at a cat pic?
My threat model is accidentally installing malware that reads the database of my passwords. I trust my KeepassXC database because I use a strong and long password, so even if malware can read my KeepassXC file, it won't be able to extract the passwords. I feel like Firefox is not as safe.
>I trust my KeepassXC database because I use a strong and long password, so even if malware can read my KeepassXC file, it won't be able to extract the passwords. I feel like Firefox is not as safe.
You can set a "primary password" for firefox's password manager, meaning that you first have to enter a password before you can access the stored passwords. That should provide equivalent security to using KeepassXC.
> You can set a "primary password" for firefox's password manager
Wow. I've been using Firefox for 18+ years and I've never knew about this feature! Thanks!
So malware which installs a key scanner to read everything you enter is outside of your threat model, as is external surveillance to record what you type.
Choose a password manager which you like. I like having a paper book with a dumb-ass encryption scheme, because my threat model is that I am not going to worry about physical attacks, and servers will detect attempts to brute-force the dumb-ass scheme by adding delays after the first few failures.
I use Firefox's manager for my Mastodon accounts, because no one cares for my 10 followers, and the instance manager can resolve things if needed.
He stated the higher security model he uses; a paper book. As well as his threat model, which is pretty coherent and relevant in this modern age.
I'd love to see someone "hack" his book, it would be quite the impressive hack.
> little cache of your emails, throwaway passwords
I have five passwords in my Firefox manager. (More if I include the ones which are no longer valid, like a few ftp passwords, and passwords to routers I no longer use.)
I think I'm safe.
I avoid online services which require identity as much as I can, because yes, any data builds up. Which means, yes, I buy things in stores, not online, I use cash, not credit/debit/e-cash, and I don't use apps.
If you do use online services, apps, etc., then it sure feels like you are assuming that information leak doesn't matter to you, so it doesn't matter at all.
Trust me, automated bot sending malware always care about your accounts.
Your malware would still need the password for the PBKDF step to decrypt the Firefox database
> risk model
Hah. Don't bother us with your mumbo-jumbo, we're doing computer security here.
I will take Kamchatka from Alaska, using my model cannon, my model horsemen and my three model soldiers.
I never found a way to lock the password manager in Firefox with its own password. They probably aren't bad, but they are also way behind on features and general usability, as compared to standalone password managers.
If you have passwords that are used outside the browser, putting them into the browsers password manager, getting them out feels a little cumbersome.
Related to the tool: Why not just click the export button in Firefox?
Check "Use a Primary Password" in preferences.
There are a large number of similar projects out there.
I implemented login credential extraction for both Chrom* and FF-based browsers in the somewhat shambolic but generally-useful `browser_cookie3` Python module last year:
https://github.com/borisbabic/browser_cookie3/compare/master...
At work, we use 1Password, but for personal use, I recommend 0Password https://0password.github.io/ which I made myself :)
NO ONE should trust a website delivering JS that could do who-knows what the next time they skip reading the code. Like, send the inputs to a third party.
Please delete this project and your comment.
If you want to be helpful, write native code that user can read, compile, and install, and persistently use without risk of backdoor-out-of-the blue.
Do you read your password manager's code every time it updates? Probably not, because you trust the author's reputation.
I wouldn't trust this page with my passwords either, but not because of the reasons that you mention. I haven't checked, but maybe it is simple enough to read the code in its entirety and then self-host? If so, nothing wrong with that.
Very rude comment imho.
Do 1password/lastpass extensions not include remote code/resources? Of course they do.
It's hosted on GitHub Pages so you don't need to check if the code has changed. Just look for any commits. From what I can see, the last one was three months ago
I forge git commits now and then so I know this but maybe it is not common knowledge. Git commits can be forged.
Content and dates can be changed.
That assumes that the code was honorable in the first place. I think you have to assume that this was not posted by someone with honorable intentions.
I like this, but it needs to be an offline cli before I would use it :)
It's a cool idea, all you need to remember is the service and the master password.
But you need to make it easy to run on a local computer to convince the die hards. ;)
idk why this got downvoted.
You created something cool and it pays tribute to a loved one.
Awesome.
No Primary Password ?
does Chrome doing this better?
You still need access to the key to decrypt it regardless of the browser.
Firefox is using TripleDES??
It uses both AES and TripleDES
If you glance at the code there's a single "key encryption key" in the whole SQLITE file (in the 'metadata' table). That key is decrypted using AES with the PBKDF2 derived secret.
Then each password is in turn encrypted using TripleDES. The "data encryption key" for each these records is in turn encrypted using the aforementioned "key encryption key".
My suspicion is that the TripleDES format must be really old, and when they migrated the crypto layer to use AES they just re-encrypted the top layer (the "key encryption key" later) to use AES. It's much faster (and safer) to just re-encrypt all the TripleDES keys with the new AES than go and mess with "all" the records in the database. It's inelegant and lazy but you effectively get "AES level" of security without having to do all the work, so to speak…
https://github.com/Sohimaster/Firefox-Passwords-Decryptor/bl...
I don't know about the particular case of TripleDES+AES but I think in a general case you can't claim that A+B encryption is always at least as strong as B alone. The A part can result in e.g. first bytes of input being the same enabling a crib-type attack.
I'm not defending this choice, and I think you're right in general.
In this case, the only thing encrypted with TripleDES is the password itself, so the practicality of a crib or other known plaintext attacks is debatable in my opinion.
If you use the same (or similar) password everywhere, then you have bigger worries than Firefox use of TripleDES. Password stuffing based with leaks from poorly hashed password DB (cough facebook cough) is likely the most practical attack vector in this case.
If all your passwords are like q@qrG#Z4ARYm^qjeTEMN2Kh45v^p7L# then crib like attacks are impractical.
There are other weird/debatable choices in the Firefox encryption layer:
- Why bother with CBC? Things like AES-GCM or other authenticated* encryption mode would be nicer. Not sure it's a flaw here (google the cryptographic doom principle of Moxie Marlinspike)
- Why not wrap the encryption keys with some kind of "key wrap" mode instead. There are such things as AES-KV for instance.
- Why do the weird PBDKF2 derivation here? It's not based on a password the player enters, so there's nothing to "strengthen"? Seems oddly unnecessary (or I don't understand and there's a password somewhere).
- If there's a password then PBKDF2 is really really shit compared to scrypt or even better one the variant of argon OWASP said you should use.
The README is surely LLM slop.
What…?
> Firefox is using TripleDES??
What's wrong with it ? /s
I would mostly say that it's just slow and AES is a much more modern and faster (partly due to hardware acceleration built into modern chips) that is already built info Firefox to support TLS anyways. There are some known attacks against 3DES now, but nothing that completely breaks it yet. And, since this is just for local storage, primarily, it shouldn't be as vulnerable as using 3DES for TLS channel encryption.
For a password manager, whether a cipher is fast or slow could mean something entirely different than for something that has to encrypt and decrypt large amounts of data. Cycles per byte is probably completely irrelevant here and I'd expect performance to basically be a function of how many cache misses (both data and code) are incurred to decrypt a single password.
Thanks, even tho the comment above signaled sarcasm, the explanation was helpful for me, as I really had no idea what 3DES means and why it could be problematic.
The problem wasn't that a google search was to much effort, I just happened to be in the comments and saw this right with an explanation below it.
I actually read up on it quite a bit afterwards.
Feels very unwarranted to just assume laziness into a simple thank you for information spreading.
Any "simple" Google query now means pages of nonsense answers, promoted sites, AI "help", before you even get to a cogent result.
Much better to just talk to others than use Google.
It's not even done well.
Say you're building a feature for a password manager to import passwords from firefox. You'd want the the firefox decryption functions to be available as library.
Or say you're building a tool to extract data from broken hard drives, partially recovered filesystems, etc. Again, you'd want to have this available as a library so you can import the functions you need and use them in your own tooling.
Normally you'd expect this package to primarily export a lib with a "cli" subfolder that provides a sample CLI tool that imports the lib.
The fact that this tool requires libusb which is solely needed for the useless list usb devices functionality is extremely sketchy. It makes using this tool legitimately harder and only helps attackers.
Did you hear about red team?
Big surprise, every "penetration testing" aka hacking tool, can be turned into malware. It's FOSS omg.
In the grown up world where people can hold a respectful discussion, there's a difference between being able to use stock code in your malware and distributing ready-to-be-used code.
You are aware that satellite guided surface to air missile systems are not a mere git clone away? There are good reasons for controlling weapons, while still letting everybody be free to study them.
No one is talking about a satellite guided surface to air missile system.
We outlawed sticks because sticks can be used to press the red "do not press" button
Professionals can assemble their own tools. Why package it up all nice for the skiddies?