Ask HN: What is the best password manager available today?
I am afraid of a private company being responsible for my passwords but also not confident in my own ability to manage any sort of password manager across all my devices. What do people do?
For maximum security (no cloud sync): KeePassXC
In both cases an essential feature applies: if you forget your master password you've lost access to your password database.
Could you link some?
I mean, that sounds like a major claim, but it doesn't appear to be mentioned on either of their Wikipedia pages, in their FAQ's, nor on some of the top-results from Google.
For example, from [KeePassXC's "FAQ"](https://keepassxc.org/docs/ ):
> Why KeePassXC instead of KeePass?
> KeePass is a very proven and feature-rich password manager and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. However, it is written in C# and therefore requires Microsoft's .NET platform. On systems other than Windows, you can run KeePass using the Mono runtime libraries, but you won't get the native look and feel which you are used to.
> KeePassXC, on the other hand, is developed in C++ and runs natively on all platforms giving you the best-possible platform integration.
, where they don't appear to claim a security-advantage.
[This security-audit [PDF]](https://keepassxc.org/assets/pdf/KeePassXC-Review-V1-Molotni... ) claimed:
> It is interesting to notice, that the code of KeePassXC is organized in classes cleaner than the code of KeePass in C#. The classes are smaller, the functions are shorter. See e.g. the code to read a database. The reason for this might be that KeePass grew organically into a more complex logical structure and maybe it could enjoy some refactorings. In any case, right now, it is easier to review KeePassXC code for security and to understand it than to do so for KeePass.
, which seemed like a point in KeePassXC's favor.
Bitwarden (optionally with self-hosted Vaultwarden) - Best UX for the FOSS options, syncs all your devices, overall just pretty good.
Website: https://bitwarden.com/
Vaultwarden: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
Desktop: https://keepassxc.org/
Android: https://www.keepassdx.com/
iOS: https://strongboxsafe.com/
Syncthing: https://syncthing.net/
pass: https://www.passwordstore.org/
gopass: https://www.gopass.pw/
However, I have just started exploring using vaultwarden (a rust rewrite of bitwarden, which is self-hosted).
It's doable, but you have to import the public gpg key of everybody who needs to access the secrets. Effectively, every secret ends up encrypted with the public key of every user who needs access - not sure how scalable it would be if you have more than a small team of people accessing it this way.
It has first-class support for multiple stores and it's 100% compatible with pass databases.
Since it interfaces with GPG I would suspect something to do with how your gpg configuration is set up (is it trying to talk to a gpg-agent or possibly a pin-entry program that is timing out or something like that). Intrinsically what it does is completely trivial in terms of compute etc.
I sync via WebDAV on my Synology NAS and I’m not really worried to lose anything since every synced device has a full copy of the data.
Thought about switching to 1password a few months back since we’re using it at work and the client is better but they don’t have an Enpass import. It supports some kind of CSV transfer but I don’t want to pay for a bunch of, worst case scenario, not really perfectly structured data so I decided to stick with what I have.
Edit: when thinking of switching I was a little nitpicky. I’m pretty happy with Enpass everything considered. 1p client is just even better but with the give them your data and your money thing, which I’m not necessarily fond of
"no-nonsense, ad-free, tracker-free, and cloud-free manner. Free and open source."
Pair with Syncthing to go across devices.
It's worth noting that they really fubared the 1Password 8 transition and I was very irritated that they had me looking at alternatives. However, they gradually fixed the problems and missing features and now I'm 100% satisfied with it again.
I’d never use 1Password again. While the software may be good when you try it, I’m sure they will ruin it at a later date. That was my experience. The company earned my enmity.
The downside is that is cloud based.
It's only a matter of time before 1Password has a real security problem because the business forces at 1Password appear to be much stronger than the engineering forces.
They gave me the choice, and then they took it away so they could make more money, directly at the cost of security.
They want to add telemetry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35691383
It's a march of small concessions and after 5 years of marching you find yourself very far away from where you thought you were. "We only collect things that don't matter to you, trust us."
They are taking money: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29993961
That means that that shareholders can make the company choose things that benefit shareholders at the cost of customers. Taking investment is a fundamental change in trust architecture.
I no longer believed that 1password is aligned with me, and alignment is a constant force always acting. Removing local vaults was proof of lack of alignment. Removing local vaults was proof that 1Password will choose money over security. Removing local vaults was proof that that appearing worthy of trust is a lower priority than coercing people into their cloud.
By way of example: I recently moved overseas, and in the process I wiped my desktop and moved to a laptop-only setup. Unfortunately, I managed to back up an outdated Adobe Lightroom catalog, not my current catalog, so I lost about two years' worth of catalog data -- including Lightroom edit histories. Yes, this is obviously a mistake on my part, but I recognise that I make these mistakes, and I'm willing to trade some loss of privacy and security for a significant decrease in a different risk profile.
Removing a local option is shitty, but there's nothing wrong with providing cloud-based storage.
The problem isn't their offering of their custom cloud storage solution, but them forcing it upon people who were happy with the current state.
I've used 1password for 16 years and it is SOLID.
This is very much a case of "don't invent your own cryptosystem", especially not in bash.
The metadata leakage is not good from a privacy standpoint, but brings about much more important security benefits that are mentioned in the post. Using Gopass will hide metadata.
Even “opensource” apps such as strongbox and keepassium have no way of asserting that whatever code they publish on GitHub is the same that I’m installing through the AppStore.
Am I just overly paranoid?
This is the main hindrance for me to using KeePassXC everywhere. If I’m going to blindly trust anyone I prefer to trust apple keychain.
Like all services I self-host for personal use, it's only accessible via VPN.
If you want to save some money, it will give you an automatic 25% discount if you just wait around for some amount of days before buying the full version. Applies to both versions of the app.
Kepass kdb file compatible but can access through browser interface. Backup kdb file to cloud storage.
Don't like bitwarden. Keeping your encrypted password file in Google drive is much better and portable than self hosting on your own server.
There is also Passage, which is a similar offering, but I have problems with Yubikey PIV PIN caching (and prefer CV25519 to NIST curves).
i have very little confidence recommending anything other than bitwarden/vaultwarden or keepassxc