1password and OneSafe - what's the difference?
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Hi @hammerabi!
I can't speak at all about the features or design of someone else's product, but let me point out a few things about 1Password.
I'm going to take this opportunity to highlight what I consider some less visible aspects of our approach to security. These are far from the only things that help set us apart, but they are the kinds of things that I spend a lot of time thinking about.
Our data format and design is open to public scrutiny and criticism.
See our blog post, You have secrets; we don’t. Why our data format is public to see why this is so important in a security product.
We will say no to feature requests that may seem like they add security, but might actually weaken it.
People sometimes ask for us to offer a "vault within a vault" or "item within an item" structure, where one password is used to unlock the outer vault, and then a second password is needed to unlock an inner super-secret vault. We know why people ask for this, but we have continued to say "no". Here's why:
Let's consider things encrypted with completely random passwords comprised
of letters and digits only. Suppose you encrypt something with a ten
character password of that sort. There are 62 possible characters in each
position (the letters "a" through "z", "A" through "Z" and digits "0"
through "9".) A ten character password would then have 6210
possibilities.Now suppose that you encrypt the whole thing again with another ten
character password. So you have encrypted the things with one ten
character password and encrypted that with another ten character password.
You have to remember two ten character passwords (20 characters), and it
might feel as if your data is now protected with the strength of a 20
character password. It isn't.Remember that that for each of those passwords there are 6210
possibilities that an attacker would have to try to go through them all.
That is a strength of about 59.5 bits. If you use two such passwords, then
the attacker needs to do twice as much work to go through them all. So it
is 2 × 6210 possibilities altogether. That is 60.5 bits.
Adding a second password for a double encryption only increased the
strength by one bit.Now lets contrast this with just moving from a ten character password to an eleven character password. We now have 6211 possibilities for 65.5 bits. So we actually 6 bits by adding an additional character.
Adding one character to the length of such a password, makes the attacker
work 62 times harder (6 bits), while adding a separate password for a
separate encryption only doubles the work an attacker has to do (1 bit).Because using two password (vault within a vault) makes things feel
stronger while only adding one bit, it will lead to people using weaker
passwords, thus making a real reduction in their security.A great deal of security is counter-intuitive. We build things with that in mind. We want to make it easier for people to behave securely than insecurely, and so have to deny such feature requests.
We read the primary literature in cryptography
We are not cryptographers. But we are able to follow the latest developments in academic cryptography. An example of how this can come into play is with our move from 128 bit AES keys to 256 bit AES keys. We made the decision to do so fully aware that there are ways in which such a move could actually make things weaker.
There is an attack on AES-256 that isn't applicable to AES-128. It doesn't reduce the strength of AES-256 too much at this point, but the research looks like the kind of thing that will "improve" in the future. So why did we still make the move to AES256 with the knowledge? It's because the particular weakness in the AES256 key schedule is only a problem for related key attacks. We already are careful to pick all encryption keys randomly and independently and use encryption modes that mean that we are never using related keys.
You can read more about this and other things about our move from 128 bit AES keys to 256 bit keys in: Guess why we’re moving to 256-bit AES keys
Now this particular example isn't a substantial security issue in and of
itself, but it does illustrate that we are not merely just putting pieces together from cryptographic libraries and following "rules of thumb". We have an understanding of where those rules of thumb come from.Loads of other distinguishing features
There just isn't time for me to list what makes 1Password special. Our
customer support; our design for for people, our long history and
experience.0 -
I can't speak at all about the features or design of someone else's product, but let me point out a few things about 1Password.
I'm going to take this opportunity to high-ight what I consider some less visible aspects of our approach to security. These are far from the only things that help set us apart, but they are the kinds of things that I spend a lot of time thinking about.
@jpgoldberg I hate to be pedantic, but how do you know what sets you apart if you don't know what your competitors are doing?
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I'm quite sure @jpgoldberg knows full well the abilities (and flaws) of competing products. I would imagine he is not the sort of person who would seek to denigrate another product on a public forum.
Stephen
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I would imagine he is not the sort of person who would seek to denigrate another product on a public forum.
I'm sure that is true, but it doesn't really help when trying to analyse the pros and cons of various offerings. In this case, the OP was clearly trying to understand why 1Password is more than double of the price of its competitor so a proper explanation is important.
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There are some nice independent reviews on Macworld which may help you.
Stephen
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That's true, but those reviews don't cover the technical details of the security on offer, focusing mainly on usability and pricing.
Maybe that's just a reflection of my own biases as a technically savvy user. I want to know to how 1Password compares to others (better/worse/same) and some technical detail on why that is the case.For example, one of the reviews mentioned that LastPass has no local gui and is entirely web based. However, they make no mention of the security implications of that choice compared to running native code. Also note that online reviewers don't necessarily have any real knowledge of the technicalities which is why asking the companies involved for direct comment is a good thing to my mind.
Maybe the OP doesn't care about that and the reviews you link will help him, but for me they're mostly fluff.
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I still don't think you can expect any business with a product to sell to fully analyze the competition in its own forum. There is an inherent conflict of interest in doing that, and I'd guess that even if such a comparison were articulated, we's all have to be skeptical about the conflict anyway. I think @jpgoldberg's account in this thread has to stand on its own, whether he knows as much about what others are up to or not. It has to speak for itself. Of course, I've already committed to the software, but it seems quite compelling to me.
I do agree that most of the reviews of this space are not helpful with regard to security, which is unfortunate. Same is mostly true of reviews in other spaces.
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It's not as much a conflict of interest as it is simply poor taste. I think what @jpgoldberg meant was that while we may be aware of what others are doing, we don't find it helpful to compare 1Password to other products. Rather, let them speak for themselves, and we'll tell you why we think 1Password is a great option. :)
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@RichardPayne asked
jpgoldberg I hate to be pedantic, but how do you know what sets you apart if you don't know what your competitors are doing?
Well spotted!
Perhaps I should have worded that as "here are things that I feel may set us apart; you need will need to see for yourself whether other companies provide this."
You also wrote:
Those reviews [Macworld, etc] don't cover the technical details of the security on offer, focusing mainly on usability and pricing.
We would love for there to be reviews that compare on security design, but quite frankly those are not going to happen or be done well in the popular press. At best those will contrast on the "buzzword" security features. That is, they will take the security blurb from each products web page and put those in a comparison table.
Technical reviews
We do, occasionally, get more detailed comparisons along specific lines from cryptographers about some very specific properties.
"On the Security of Password Manager Database Formats"
For example, Gasti & Rasmussen 2012 looked at whether an attacker can get away with modifying the database of a password manager. That is, they developed a concept of MAL-CDBA which is analogous to MAL-CTXT and analyzed a number of database formats for this. The Agile Keychain format (like most others) did not pass this test. Also because not everything is encrypted in in the Agile Keychain Format, then it didn't meet IND-CDBA either.
Of the nine password managers they studied only one, PasswordSafe V3, fully met MAL-CDBA. I should say that that is at the cost of browser integration true synching.
The OPVault data format comes much much closer to winning the MAL-CDBA, but it still won't. One of the authors of that paper said he was looking at doing an update and asked for technical details. Here is an excerpt of what I told him with respect to MAL-CDBA and our new data format.
Your ESORICS 2012 paper was very helpful to us in our move authenticated encryption. Although we were already committed to doing that before you contacted us, you really did help us clarify our thinking.
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Anyway, the new format is fully documented here:
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http://learn.agilebits.com/1Password4/Security/keychain-design.html
This was actually published in November 2012 in preparation for 1Password 4 for iOS (December 2012).
Note that that is the form the data lives in when it is "in the cloud". Each instance of 1Password will create a local data file (currently sqlite3) for efficient use. The encryption in those is identical to what is described in the document I linked to. There's just less base64 encoding in the sqlite3 files.
I can acknowledge that despite our increased use of Authenticated Encryption, we still lose your the MAL-CDBA game. This is because our index of records is not verified. (Actually there is no index.) So Adv_rw can remove records from a database and it will still verify as valid. Adv_rw can also insert a valid record (for example older versions of some record) into the database and it will still be declared valid.
We also continue to fail at achieving IND-CDBA iff you consider any of to following to be record data:
Some metadata remains unencrypted: Which folder an item is in; what category (Login, Credit Card, ...) an item belongs to; creation time; modify time; and last sync time.
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The item UUIDs are fully available, which can be used to determine how many attachments, if any, an item has associated with it. The UUID of any folder an item belongs to is unencrypted, and thus an attacker can determine which items are in the same folder.
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But notably, URLs, Titles, etc are not in plaintext in the new format.
“Secure Password Managers” and “Military-Grade Encryption” on Smartphones: Oh, Really?
In May 2012, Andrey Belenko and Dmitry Sklyarov (yes, that Dmitry Sklyarov) of Elcomsoft produced an analysis (PDF) of 17of password managers on mobile devices, 1Password Pro 3.5 included. That report correctly dinged us for two things, one substantive and one "theoretical". We got the substantive one fixed within weeks.
We actually caught a lot of bad press for this despite the fact that we were
clearly among the best of the field for the specific things that the Elcomsoft team looked at. Because of our reputation it is natural that the press will focus on us, and it is a nice position to be in. I can't be too upset about the double standard in reporting because we, ourselves, aim for a higher standard.0 -
Great reviews above. Thanks. While I read most of the articles in AgileBits Blog section reviewing passwords and security, typical computer and smartphone user would not find those interesting enough to read and understand.
My question is:Is there an "elevator ride" explanation of 1Password benefits?
I often come across coworkers who either do not have any password manager or use some free version they found on the internet. Unfortunately the only time I had any success to convince someone to give 1Password a try was during your sale. What could I say in one or two sentences to convince them to give it a try?
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Is there an "elevator ride" explanation of 1Password benefits?
I wouldn't have thought so since a real appreciation of the benefits requires an understand of the problems with password re-use. Most people can intuitively grasp that having to memorise large numbers of complex password is difficult but they will just say "reuse the same complex password", and they do more often than not.
The risks involve in web based password managers are even harder to elucidate in a simple bullet list.It's one of those things; people don't change their behaviour until they either understand the risks they're taking or they get stung.
That said, I'm crap at marketing so maybe the Agilebits guys can do better. ;)
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What could I say in one or two sentences to convince them to give it a try?
I usually say something like: "1Password makes doing the secure thing the easy thing. Have long complex passwords that are unique to each site and never have to even type them in yourself. Use your brain for more interesting things."
Sometimes I just show folks my Gmail password and say, "I have one like that for every site."
[Enhanced] shoulder surfing aside, it is a great demo when your passwords are so strong you can show them to someone and not worry about them memorizing it (or you can just change it immediately because 1Password makes it easy to generate a new one). :)
I guess I shouldn't "recommend" such a thing in an official capacity, but it is something I've been known to do personally.
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My "elevator pitch"
My "elevator pitch" is similar to @Khad's. An idealized form of the dialogue goes something like this.
Them: So what is this 1Password thing for?
Me: Well, let me ask you a couple of questions. About how many different websites to you have logins for?
Them: Oh, about 40. I don't know.
Me: And how many different passwords do you use.
Them: Two, no three.
Me: So if one of your passwords gets stolen by a security problem in one of those sites the bad guys now know your password for
every other site that you use that password for.Them: I guess so.
Me: And we know that the bad guys actually do break into accounts this ways. So it is really important to have a unique password
for each site and service.Them: How the [expletive deleted] am I supposed to remember 40 different passwords?
Me: [With big grin] You are absolutely correct. It is ridiculous to ask people to remember scores of passwords. Asking people to do something that isn't humanly possible is asking for trouble. So how about a program that creates and remembers those for you?
Me: [continuing] For example, I do not know my Facebook password. Here's what it looks like [little demo]. I never need to know it or type it. And I have a different password for every site and service. I just need to remember my one password, My 1Password Master Password."
Depending on time this then goes into a demo and/or answering specific questions about the security of it, etc.
The one time this went "wrong"
Here is a paraphrase of a conversation I had with someone last year:
Me: So how many different website accounts do you have.
Her: About 80.
Me: And how many different passwords do you remember
Her: About 80.
Me: I mean distinct passwords.
Her: Each password is different and unique for each site
Me: Are the passwords related to each other? If an attacker discovers two or three of them, do they have a good chance of guessing others?
Her: No. Each password is independent and random.
Me: I'm sorry, but I didn't think that this is humanly possible.
Her: You forgot that I have a eidetic memory. If I make an effort to memorize something, I will remember it.
Me: And how do you create your passwords?
Her: When I was working at [particular government facility] I was given training in password selection.
Me: OK. Well, it looks like you actually do not need a password manager.
Some of you might notice that I alluded to her at the end of a recent blog post:
So far, I have met one person with many logins who does not need to put multiple eggs into a single basket. She credibly claims to have memorized about 80 unique and reasonably secure passwords. Her superpower is a photographic memory and specific security training in password choice. The rest of us, however, do not share her superpower,
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Go the "What does your spouse do if you get hit by a bus?" route.
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@jpgoldberg but what you got instead was what has to be a top ten security party story - I think that has to beat a single defeat ;-)
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