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I thought 1Password and LastPass were equal. Then I was asked to use LastPass still can’t believe how crude & crap it is compared to 1Password (even before breaches.)

I just logged in to delete my dormant free account – turns out I'm in a "Premium Trial" that I definitely never signed up for and never received any communication on. What happens when that runs out? No way to find out. And their UI hasn't improved a bit, they really try hard to be as unattractive as possible. Good riddance.

So your more secure solution involves using... another, stronger, password? How would your mother use 1Password if she now has to remember _two_ passwords?

Both LastPass and Bitwarden (and 1Password) support 2FA. This isn't a solution that will have mass adoption, but the UX is much better and more secure than using a secret key. It could even be used by non technical users, depending on the device.

But password managers aren't a solution for digital identity. They're a hassle to use and a huge security risk, especially centralized ones. What we need is a solution that is more secure, but crucially also easier to use. The industry has been trending towards passwordless solutions for years now (OTP, FIDO, WebAuthn, etc.), and the current passkey iteration by Google might be something that could have mass adoption. Assuming you trust Google, but the technology seems sound.

We still might want to use secure storage for other data, but that's a much more niche use case that can be secured with existing MFA solutions, and doesn't have to be as user friendly as identity management.

> Both LastPass and Bitwarden (and 1Password) support 2FA.

AFAIK it doesn't help if your vault is in the hand of someone who obtained it from a security breach on lastpass/bitwarden side.

That's where 1password's security key helps because you need that for decryption. Apps will store it so you really only need it once when setting up a new phone/computer and you can transfer it from another via qr code, but if all you have is a vault dump, you're out of luck even if you phish the password (which should be easier than phishing the security key since it's used a lot and in muscle memory)

> How would your mother use 1Password if she now has to remember _two_ passwords?

She doesn't have to remember the secret key. She prints out copies and puts them somewhere safe.

> Both LastPass and Bitwarden (and 1Password) support 2FA [...] the UX is much better and more secure than using a secret key

No. Please don't make statements like this if you're not certain. 2FA confers zero benefit in a breach like this one. It is merely an access control, and doesn't provide any cryptographic benefit. Secret keys, however, make such a breach basically worthless. No amount of rainbow table usage or master password compromise will help you unless you can obtain the secret key.

Nice break down and explanation!

How does 1P compare to built in keychain (Apple devices) when it comes to security? My guess is that there’s encryption key for the vault and private key for access? I’ve been using 1P for family secrets for a while but I’m grieving more and more frustrated with frequent technical issues (unreliable sync, browser extension loses connection to 1P and has to be restarted). And I’m considering switching to OS built in keychain and maybe 1P personal for family shared secrets?

As a LastPass user (that hasn't logged in since ~2015 :-/ ) can you explain the difference please?

> This is why I prefer 1Password, as it requires the secret key to be compromised in addition to the Master Password, thus providing protection against a weak master password.

With 1Password you also have a randomly generated secret key. As I recall it’s a 128-bits, but could be wrong.

To access your vault an attacker will need both your master password and the secret key. These are effectively combined to generate your keys for decryption.

This protects against an attacker gaining access to 1Password servers. They can’t control whether you chose an awful password or not. So to protect them the secret key adds a ton of protection for those with weak, reused, or compromised passwords. Even in those cases an attacker needs to guess the secret key alongside the awful password. Using both the secret key and a strong master password is basically the equivalent of making a vault incredibly secure and, uncrackable using todays technology.

This does not protect against local compromise of a device of yours though, as the Secret Key is stored on device and is accessible. This prevents you from having to type it every time.

Sorry, I don't get it. The secret key has to be stored somewhere, right? If it's on the server, the attacker gets it together with the vault. If it's on the client, then you lose your phone → you lose your passwords, which is, while secure, very risky and I wouldn't expect it from a company focused on regular customers.

It sounds like a public and private key pair, like in asymmetric encryption or public-key cryptography. The private key is stored on the client. The private key and users password are both required to authenticate against the public key stored the server.

An attacker would have no success with a dictionary attack (used in the article). Even if the password was in the dictionary, the private key is still missing.

No. It's symmetric, not asymmetric. The secret key is a 128-bit key that is effectively concatenated with the master password for master key derivation.

When you setup your 1password account you are provided an ‘Emergency kit’ in the form of a PDF containing this key and other info. You are supposed to save it somewhere secure or print it and place it somewhere secure.

You could save it in a local keepassXC database if you like.

This 128bit key is only saved locally, not on their servers. So contrary to you disbelief, 1Password does actually prioritise security in this manner over focusing on ‘regular customers’.

Its also fairly common to have more than one device, so you would have the key on more than one device as a result too.

It’s generated locally when you create your account and not shared with 1Password. Various keys are derived from your master password and secret key.

The secret key is never sent to 1Password and is only used locally.

This is why it’s so much more secure than LastPass, and Bitwarden, and any other cloud hosted solution. I know, I just pissed off all the Bitwarden fans, but it is true.

You must save your Secret Key, but it’s also saved in Apple’s Keychain so there’s a copy there as well.

Finally, if you do lose your secret key, your account can be recovered using the Account Recovery process as long as there is someone else on your account with the appropriate permissions. If you want to know how that works, ask, but it’s sort of lengthy so I’ll skip it for now.

> Good tutorial. This is why I prefer 1Password, as it requires the secret key to be compromised in addition to the Master Password, thus providing protection against a weak master password.

Do you know that or do you just hope they do what you think they do?

Ultimately I trust that they do as they say, which is necessary to any modern computer use. The same way that I have to trust that my OS vendor is not stealing everything I have.

Yes true, attack surface is already big enough, lets upload our passwords into the cloud...cant be much worse...oh wait...

It's literally part of the vault creation flow.

Sure you think that, but is it the reality?

They do what any reasonable security company does, and call in vendors who have negative incentive to lie: https://support.1password.com/security-assessments/

I was especially impressed by the Cure53 ones, where they were provided access to the source code: https://bucket.agilebits.com/security/Cure53-1PW18-report.pd...