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Comment by borplk | Hacker News Reader

As someone who exclusively uses a password manager with random unique passwords for each service it always amuses me to see posts like this.

Years ago I relieved myself from the stress by using a password manager. Now for all I care they could be storing it in plaintext and it wouldn't make a damn difference to me. Problem solved.

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It would still make a significant difference since someone could still compromise your Dropbox account... Having a password manager doesn't all of the sudden make all of your passwords secure on all of your different accounts.

The point is that the passwords on all of the accounts are different. Thus, the compromise of one service does not impact the accounts on any others.

Plus 1Password has a sort of watchtower setting which shows you which websites had know security issues since your last password change, so you can stay relatively secure all over the place.

That doesn't mean I don't care if my Dropbox account got breached because the password was in plaintext.

I suppose there are cases where someone got the dropbox password hashes and didn't own dropbox enough to have access to your dropbox account without reversing your hash. However, in most cases where plaintext passwords are exposed, the attacker will own your account at the service that was attacked because they are already inside that system.

If the DropBox passwords are leaked I am going to change my DropBox password whether it was hashed properly or not. The difference is that I won't have to change my password on dozens of other sites.

Make sure you don't read any of Tavis Ormandy's tweets or posts about the state of password manager security then.

Just curious which one do you use?

I use 1Password on OSX and iOS, it's worked great.

I (not OP) use pwsafe on macOS and iOS, a port of Password Safe [1] designed by Bruce Schneier.

It syncs the encrypted blob to iCloud, so I can pull up passwords on the iPhone if necessary. It is fairly simple, not much browser/OS integration - you just open the app, choose a safe/blob, enter the master password, and can then browse/edit your list of passwords, and in particular copy a password.

Simple, not too much functionality - not too much that can go wrong, I hope. (Often it has been the browser integration that lead to exploits in LastPass/1Pass, if I'm not mistaken)

[1] https://www.pwsafe.org/relatedprojects.shtml

Sorry I don't reveal that.

Unless someone steals the password to your password manager...

Not written down. They'd have to waterboard me. If something traumatic happens and I forget it I'm screwed.

Keyloggers and other malware usually specifically targets passform managers.

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