I’ve always hated the idea of using a subscription/cloud hosting for password management. I feel like I should have a LOT more control over that stuff and I don’t really want to hand all my keys over to a company.
All my secrets have been going in a highly encrypted archive with a long passphrase, but obviously that isn’t convenient on all devices. It’s been fine, I can open it on any computer but it’s not super quick. It does have the advantage of being able to put in multiple files, notes, private keys but it’s not ideal.
Anyway, finally found something that isn’t subscription, and has a similar philosophy - a highly encrypted archive file, and it’s open source and has heaps of clients including web browser plugins so it’s usable anywhere, and you can sync the vault with any file sync you like.
Thought you guys might appreciate the find, password managers have always been a bit of a catch 22 for me.
Note for android i found keepassxc the best app, and i’m using KeePassHelper browser plugin, and the KeePassXc desktop app as well as the free official one. Apps all seem to be cross platform.
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Love KeePass, I use it to store all my passwords including to SyncThing, then I keep my KeePass file in my SyncThing instance so I can recover from a disaster. Definitely nothing could go wrong with that ;-)
I use KeePassXC on my laptop, KeePassDX on my phone and sync them with Syncthing.
This ia pretty sweet
it’s so good, wish I’d found it sooner
Exactly the same thought I had when I ditched Bitwarden for it. In my case, the transition was made even easier as I was already using Syncthing on my devices.
keepass2android is worth a try as well.
Not bothered about the potential for keyloggers or even OS-level snooping on what is presumably your privacy-free Android device? Personally I would never type the master password into anything other than a computer running a FOSS stack that I control, but perhaps that is excessive caution.
Well, there is a limit to my paranoid. It’s really hard to find a sweet spot between security and practicality.
I found mine with this settings I said
Keepass clients typically have biometric input… and let’s not pretend you don’t need to type in your vaultwarden password in Android on the first run, either.
You could use a usb-c passkey but I know that’s not the majority use case.
So, biometrics, master password, and USB key - 3 whole options and 3 things I personally will never be letting near Android. Unwarranted caution, no doubt.
I have the same setup. It’s really neat.
I personally prefer bitwarden, using a self-hosted vaultwarden. It’s free, it syncs, it’s easy to use.
Passphrase generator, simplelogin/addy.io integration and sync.
This makes my life so much easier.
I recently made the switch to Vaultwarden when I read a series of articles making predictions about passkeys and how they are lining up to replace passwords. Bitwarden apparently is ready to implement whatever standard becomes most popular and I had FOMO of being left behind if I stuck with keepass only. Previously I was using various keepass compatible apps and then syncing the KDBX database with my Nextcloud. (Vaultwarden is the selfhosted fork of Bitwarden)
Vaultwarden isnt a fork because bitwarden isn’t selfhostable. Bitwarden has an official selfhosted version. Vaultwarden is a lightweight rust version of the backend. As the selfhosted version by bitwarden is quite fat. Vaultwarden uses the official webapp of the webvault in their fork.
Same, and the apps work great.
I used to use keepassxc for years. Kept it synced with sync thing, though eventually work blocked networking with sync thing so I swapped to vaultwarden and never been happier.
Why sync your passwords from home with your work computer? Just keep them on your phone.
25+ character passwords that change frequently, at least in my case.
I could see it being tedious if you had to manually enter long, random string passwords regularly. Though I suppose you could change them to something easier to type. Ctrl+shift+L (bitwarden extension autofill shortcut) is just so much more convenient.
Why enter personal passwords on work computers so frequently?
This sounds like an underlying assumption of how time is being spent rather than a technical issue.
I really like Strongbox on Mac for managing my Keepass-DBs. It is very well integrated and there even is a „no phoning home“ version that strictly runs locally.
and there even is a „no phoning home“ version that strictly runs locally.
Shouldn’t that be all the versions?
Why would a password manager app that uses a local database need to phone home?
Maybe I expressed it a bit awkwardly. The other version has some integrations for syncing with Dropbox etc. and some third-party libraries. Strongbox zero is stripped of all of that.
Ok that makes more sense lol
Been a Keepass user for years and years. Absolutely top notch. There are plugins that can auto fill websites, that can open putty ssh sessions, basically everything you can imagine (or build).
Why did people stop using notepads (actual physical ones) for this? No digital storage, no leaks. Besides, after a couple of times you get the muscle memory of typing in the passwords anyway.
I’m using randomly generated 64-character passwords with upper/lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols.
I prefer not to manually enter them every time.
Also someone could find and photograph your notepad and then all your passwords are compromised in one go.
Tell me you use the same password everywhere without telling me you use the same password everywhere
And they’re very likely way too short
Try to remember
(2m(&$9hso2 Ok_(#
We will see how fast you can remember that after a long and mentally exhausting work day :)My password manager contains about 600 passwords by now. I use 30+ passwords on a daily basis for work (IT industry) so no chance in hell that I’ll remember half of those. And the ones I need maybe once a year?? Good luck without a manager.
I did this, stored in an encrypted container, for a long time. Problem is it’s not scalable unless you start reusing passwords across different sites and services, which is itself a terrible practice.
Switched to Bitwarden (self hosted) several months ago and am very happy with it.
I have a different password for each service I use. Each password is 30+ characters long and completely random with letters, numbers and special characters. There’s no way I could remember any of them and they’d be a hell to type out manually. I use KeePass on every device I own and it’s synced over my NAS. So it’s super convenient and no risk for leaks.
I don’t know if they fixed it, I hope so, but not long ago there was a very dangerous vulnerability that allowed an attacker to bring able to access the master password.
I was using it long time ago, then I discovered Bitwarden and I’m really happy with it. I suggest you to have a look, in terms of UI is better and can be self hosted too.
I think that vulnerability was a non-issue. Someone could get to your password if they had full access to your machine to run arbitrairy code. But if someone has that much access, it’s already game over.
But yeah, Bitwarden is better IMHO
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access VPN Virtual Private Network
[Thread #215 for this sub, first seen 13th Oct 2023, 19:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Are there advantages to this over self hosting Vaultwarden?
Main thing I prefer about KeePass is that it’s a straightforward app that creates a file. Self-hosting a database seems just that much more complicated.
No in my opinion its worse in every way
I used to be a KeePass user, but moved away because I was ultimately syncing the database using OneDrive, which I felt at that point it was a cloud password manager, which I didn’t like for being open to the internet and entrusting the security of the company hosting it.
And yes, I moved to self hosted Vaultwarden with Tailscale and haven’t looked back.
Love KeePass. When LastPass enshittened, I went looking for something immune to enshittification. Best money I never spent
Did LastPass do anything besides charge for it service?
They didn’t use strong encryption by default, Something about not enough iterations of whatever algorithm they use.
They also got hacked (more than once) , which is roughly when they announced the encryption issue.
I feel like they got bought by a shitty company too, but that’s beyond me.
There have been reports that some of these vaults that were stolen have already been compromised, though not sure if there is any proof.
OK, it’s just not what enshitification means. I don’t like the term but if you’re using it wrong it’s just confusing.
Fair point, I misunderstood. Thought you were asking for more general points.
As for enshitification, I suppose it started in 2015 when they were bought by LogMeIn (I looked it up), that’s where it generally always starts. Don’t know if the service degraded as I switched around that time. Though getting hacked twice in six months is pretty bad for a company guarding the publics secrets
For decent privacy oriented tool recommendations, here’s a list.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/
There was some drama about the webpages so I’ll link both to avoid angry users. Anyway, KeePassXC is on there, which it seems like it’s a fork of KeePass, you might want to check it out.
Mine is a 3-lines-script that gpg-decrypts to runtime-dir, opens editor, encrypts back, deletes in runtime-dir. Password done via zenity/yad.
I have been using KeePass for eight years. Used to just shuffle the file around with Google Drive, now I have it sync’d with Syncthing across a few devices. I use its notes feature to store associated data like S3 keys and it stores my SSH key and KeePassXC can automatically add it to an SSH agent.
I don’t really have any complaints about it.
Are there users that have tried both Keepass and Vaultwarden? I enjoy using Vaultwarden on my Synology but I wonder if it’s worth switching to Keepass.
I have both set up right now.
Things I like better about KeePass:
KeePass doesn’t use the cloud, you don’t have to worry about the server getting compromised or going down because there’s nothing public-facing to hack. You always know where your password database is.
KeePass lets you encrypt the database with not only the master password but also using the challenge-response from a YubiKey. That means every time you save your DB the encryption key is rotated and the DB is actually encrypted by two authentication factors.
While both can add custom fields to an entry, I like that KeePass has the option to set fields as protected so their contents are hidden like the passwords.
Things I like better about VaultWarden:
Convenience.
You can log in to your VaultWarden account on any device from the browser. KeePass requires some software to access the DB.
The VaultWarden companion software is just better. It just does autofill better. KeePassXC/DX work well but just not as well as the BitWarden software.
Other thoughts:
Syncing passwords between devices with KeePass requires 3rd party software like SyncThing. If you break/lose/etc your VaultWarden server you could lose all your passwords with it.
Always make/test backups.
I’m on Bitwarden right now and have been thinking of switching to KeePass. My issue keeping me from actually switching is the convenience factor. Can’t imagine making it even more annoying to use for my SO
I use a yubikey on bitwarden (vaultwarden) just fine…
Custom protected fields exist.
And you can always hide it in a vpn.A big problem with keepass is if two updates to passwords try to sync simultaneously… sync- thing/ other synching software can’t merge only the updates in each file.
I also use aYubiKey in VaultWarden but the key is not used to generate the encryption keys, only the master password is, so you don’t get that added security and benefit of the encryption keys rotating every time you save the DB.
You can have keepass on a USB drive, an exe version that doesn’t require install, along with your db.
You sure can.
But that’s not perfect.
Often businesses will lock down their computers to prevent unauthorized software from running at all, not just installing.And not lock down random external sites they see a user visiting every day that aren’t related to their work functions? Sounds like the SOC needs to get better at their monitoring.
In my experience, locking down non-work sites is much less common than locking down USB devices and unknown executables. USB devices and random executables are more of a security risk as a USB drive can be used to exfiltrate data very quickly while an executable could contain ransomware, other malware, keyloggers, etc. Sites are sandboxed and limited in terms of what they can do.
Like the other commenter said, typically websites are less locked down.
It’s simpler to sandbox the browser and prevent unauthorized software from running than to block out most of the Internet and deal with complaints all day about the web restrictions
I like that KeePass has the option to set fields as protected
Vaultwarden can do that, though its quite stiff in some aspects like folders… subfolders? nonexistant…
Ah, I couldn’t find that option.
I can add custom fields to an entry but I can’t designate them as “protected”
Of course I also thought at first that you couldn’t attach files but I guess you can, they just didn’t seem to transfer over from my KeePass DB
The interface is weird and unintuitive at times…
I have a dropdown menu at the button “New custom field” and can select “Hidden”.Oooh thank you!
Can’t believe I missed that
Folder/subfolders work just fine… when you make folder ‘a’… you can add subfolder b by typing ‘a/b’
I switched from keepass to vaultwarden years ago and for my usage I wouldn’t switch back.
I needed to be able to share some passwords with other people. I think the clients are much better. I like having a website available as a backup to access a password. All in one package that works well so I don’t need separate mechanism to synchronize between different installations. I like the easy sharing secrets through links and not having to send in cleartext with emails or texts.
And for selfhosting I like that you only need the server only for syncing newly added secrets - if vaultwarden had to be online always I’d switch back.
I used to use Keepass (thanks person who said keep ass, I can’t not see that now) for many years but started to get frustrated with stuff not syncing properly and a few other reasons I can’t remember anymore. But I think I’ll have to give it a go again. I’ve been using Enpass for a number of years and it’s been good but I’ve never liked that it’s closed source.
Just depends what you use for syncing since keepass doesn’t sync itself.
Syncthing is obviously popular.
It’s been years and I have Memory Impairment so I’m not sure but I think part of the issue with syncing was that we had a ‘family’ database which made for multiple devices and several people needing to sync that while frustrating at times was OK, until we had an episode of data loss that just killed it for us. Enpass had built in sync, a nicer UI, more features and jut more cohesive across devices.
But again, my memory is very fuzzy and it’s worth looking into again because as good as Enpass is, it’s not open source.
