Comment by dvdkon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvdkon | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with the author on many of his points. 1 and 2 are "merely" convenience features. Sure, those things make a truly stateless password manager harder to use and a very niche tool, but they're by no means fatal flaws. 3 is a good argument, but storing existing secrets is by definition out of scope for password generators. It is a usability problem, which makes using a truly stateless password generator as the only password manager harder, but still not a fatal flaw. The fourth one is in my opinion the only one which could be called a fatal flaw. It's probably the thing that has to be considered the most before using a master secret password generator. The hyperbolical title annoys me, but what annoys me probably even more is that the author then recommends (not directly, mentions as his personal choice, but that counts as a "seal of approval" for me) a closed-source cloud password manager, which could possibly be less secure than a password generator.

> Sure, those things make a truly stateless password manager harder to use and a very niche tool, but they're by no means fatal flaws.

If the Deterministic Password Generator does not generate a valid password for a given site, it's certainly a fatal flaw for that site, and a usability nightmare - now I have to remember which sites aren't supported and keep a vault anyway.

And I guess point 2 isn't a fatal flaw until you need to change a password for whatever reason, but after that it becomes quite a problem.

We both seem to have a different view of what a "fatal flaw" is. For me (especially when talking about a computer security tool), it means a very serious security vulnerability and nothing less. You seem to have a more relaxed view, accepting things that create a bad user experience as fatal flaws, too.

Regardless of whether it's "fatal" or not, usability is crucial. If it's impractical or impossible to use in common scenarios, that's a huge flaw.

Security isn't an end in and of itself, it's a means to an end. A tool which delivers on security but isn't usable still fails to fulfill its purpose, in the same way an unplugged computer is both secure and useless.

I know there's a group within the security community willing to tolerate poor user experiences, or wear them as a badge of honor, "the price of security" or so to speak. But often I find these are the same people scratching their heads wondering why OpenPGP encrypted email hasn't seen more widespread adoption, or why the Web of Trust failed (or perhaps they think it succeeded), while at the same time bemoaning successful encrypted chat systems like WhatsApp and Signal.

I would argue that user experience is just as important a consideration as the security properties of a tool.

I couldn't agree more. Getting smart but non-nerd friends set up with OpenPGP is truly an eye opener. The rate of adoption is terrible because of that and nothing else.

Even with a GUI like Enigmail, I needed hour long explainathons to make it work for these friends. Smart, borderline brilliant folk.

The same people now use WhatsApp with encryption and don't even know it. That's what a good crypto UX looks like.

I'd love for a google-free, proprietary-free, facebook-free alternative to exist but if the alternative is painful hours of setting up encrypted mail only to have it cease working after two weeks because the user forgot their passphrase, I'm gonna say I don't care too much.

"Bad user experience" implies it's still usable but inconvenient, but in fact it's completely unusable if it can't handle passwords for arbitrary sites. You might as well say that having a password manager that can only store one password is a "bad user experience."

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