Has there been any research on the market share of password managers? Both from the perspective of competition (Bitwarden vs 1Password), but also users versus non users.
@atoponce I know just one password manager which also doubles up as 2FA code generator. It's called pass, and it's a CLI application. It encrypts the data using GPG, and distributes/backs up data using git.
Just added a new key? Well, do "pass git push" to send it over, encrypted, to your git server. Yes, you'll need to do "pass git pull" on the other installs.
I can only complain that adding 2FA keys is somewhat painful.
@dimpase I'm familiar with pass(1). It has a horrible vulnerability in that it leaks all accounts to the filesystem. No modern password manager today does this.
LastPass got heavily criticized for not encrypting URLs in the DB, rightfully so, because it leaks which accounts a user has stored in the DB. They've since fixed it.
Also, PGP can die in a fire. Heh.
@atoponce @dimpase That is not what we call a "vulnerability", rather behaving correctly (not trying to lock the user's own data away from them in hidden storage they can't find, inspect, or backup).
It's arguably a "lack of hardening", but the hardening doesn't belong at this layer. If user needs protection against physical seizure, they use FDE and strong passphrase. If they need protection against malicious local apps, they run those on a different account or in a sandbox.
@dalias @dimpase The context is pass(1) however, not data in general. pass(1) reveals which accounts you're protecting, even if the password for each account is encrypted with your PGP keys.
Syncing encrypted pass(1) files to 3rd party cloud providers is a security vulnerability that other password managers does not have.
@atoponce @dimpase I'm pushing back strongly on calling this a "vulnerability". "Your private data is exposed if you sync it to somebody else's computer" is the default expected outcome. You can say "Y has stronger confidentiality properties than X because it has built-in encryption of the secret store", but this does not imply "X has a vulnerability". "Vulnerability" means something does not honor the documented or expected access controls or similar.
@atoponce @dalias
I'd be glad to learn about an alternative to pass which still has features of pass I like most, such as CLI and ability to easily sync encrypted key stores.
Perhaps the only missing ingredient in my pass setup is https://spwhitton.name/tech/code/git-remote-gcrypt/
(I don't know what it does, but if it makes it harder to get file names then it's the last missing piece of the puzzle)
@dimpase @dalias kpcli(1) is a handy little Perl script for managing KeePass databases. It's still actively developed. I used it extensively before migrating my passwords to Bitwarden.
There is also keepassxc-cli(1) for KeePassXC.
https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/blob/develop/docs/man/keepassxc-cli.1.adoc
I would recommend those if you want to stick with local/non-cloud password management. Otherwise, 1Password has a sweet CLI utility also.
https://developer.1password.com/docs/cli/get-started/
Unfortunately, BItwarden's CLI is not user-friendly.