Will you enable disabling of Universal Clipboard?

matthew_seaman

As you know from WWDC this year, iOS 10 and macOS Sierra provide a Universal Clipboard via iCloud. Is this something that will be (or already is in the betas) integrated into 1Password, disabled, or optionally disabled?

For example, in addition to expiration dates UIPasteboard has a localOnly option to prevent a pasteboard item from syncing with iCloud. In future versions of 1Password, will you enable, disable, or give the user a switch to enable or disable clipboard syncing when we copy a password?

I'm sure Apple has the Universal Clipboard feature quite secure (as even Safari 10 sends copied passwords to Universal Clipboard), but I'm just curious.

I'm a user of 1Password on my iPhone 6s, iPad Pro, and MacBook Pro (Mac App Store version).

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1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: iOS 10 Developer Beta 8
Sync Type: exclusively iCloud
Referrer: forum-search:Universal Clipboard

Pilar

Hi @matthew_seaman

Thank you for your interest on how 1Password will deal with universal clipboard. I'm going to move your comment to our iOS Beta category so the right people will be able to see it and help you better, I hope you don't mind :chuffed:

ag_kevin

Hi @matthew_seaman ,

Thanks for writing in with an excellent question. We don't know too much yet about the security of the Universal Clipboard, but our plan is to opt out of it for now. So, in other words, copying a password from 1Password on iOS will stay on the device's clipboard and will not be sent to iCloud.

As for a setting to enable Universal Clipboard, we could consider it in the future. We'd want to guage customer interest and would have to learn a bit more about the security of it before we can consider it.

I hope that answers your question. Thanks again for writing in!

Cheers,
Kevin

matthew_seaman

Thanks, that answers my question.

sjk

You're welcome, @matthew_seaman … on behalf of Kevin.

Keep the questions coming if you've got 'em. :)

ref: OPI-3676

sylocker

Universal clipboard seems like a massive security breach. I wonder how many other gaping holes iOS 10 has opened. 1Password was the first app that came to mind when I heard about this "feature" that you apparently get whether you want it or not.

Is it true that turning off Handoff stops the universal clipboard?

MrRooni

Good morning @sylocker. The new Universal Clipboard feature is powered by Handoff, so disabling Handoff will most likely disable Universal Clipboard as well. Handoff uses a secure communication channel to transfer information between devices signed into the same Apple ID so there isn't a "massive security breach" here. That being said, as @ag_kevin mentioned, we will be disabling Universal Clipboard on the iOS side of 1Password in our next feature update (version 6.5).

ondrejfuhrer

Hello guys,

I was actually interested in this topic as well! Thank you for clarification of this particular security topic, I really appreciate that!

ondrejfuhrer

Just one small thing came up my mind - since iOS 10 is already out and Sierra out tomorrow, I think if would be really nice to inform users about this behaviour, so they have no concerns about this particular security topic. Or maybe some users will actually complain that the copy-pasting does not work. So informing all of the users about this behaviour would be nice I think!

AGAlumB

Hmm. I'm not sure what the best way to do that would be, but that might not be a bad idea. Thanks for the suggestion! :)

RobertDeRose

When can we get an ETA on this release? So fair I don't like that copied passwords end up on my iOS and vice versa.

AGAlumB

@RobertDeRose: We don't have a date for any given release, since we want to make sure we test fully first. It will be available as an update through the App Store when it's ready. :)

In the mean time, you can disable Handoff in iOS or macOS in Settings/System Preferences > General if you don't want your clipboard shared between devices.

But an important thing to keep in mind is that the clipboard sharing works only locally, so the data is not sent over the internet. You'll notice that if your devices are in different locations, it won't be offered as an option on either one when pasting. Cheers! :)

steve28236

To call clipboard sharing 'a massive security breach' when you don't know anything about it is just unnecessary hyperbole.

Apple has implemented security in all hand off features, although I have not read a white paper on it. I'll trust the relevant people at AB to make the right decision.

I can imagine circumstances where clipboard sharing could be useful, but I'm not going to cry if it's missing from 1P.

Although it looks to me like it's a feature that could only be enabled through the MAS version of 1P (I might have to change back now the Rich Icons bug has been fixed).

AGAlumB

@steve23094: Although not everyone will feel this way, for myself personally I'm satisfied with having clipboard data sent encrypted between my devices locally. I may have missed something though: why would Universal Clipboard only be available in the Mac App Store app?

steve28236

@brenty My information might be out of date now but when all these new fangled hand off features were first introduced they could only be used by MAS sandboxed apps.

AGKyle

@steve23094 We'll probably have this enabled by default in a future release and available to turn off (on iOS at least) if you wish.

This is not limited to Mac App Store applications.

skippingrock

I would prefer that the opposite is the norm. To have it turned off by default and then give users a notification that they can turn on this feature or not now if they decide.

I think that 1Password should always default to having the most secure setup be the default and if a user chooses, like adding Fingerpaint unlocking or short code unlocking, they can if they like.

Besides, I see no advantage to having clipboard items from 1Password shared to my other devices. If I want a password on my Mac, I'm going to use 1Password Mac to get it. I'm never going to get the password on my iPad and have shared clipboard send it to my Mac for me.

So please, don't have this enabled be default!

AGAlumB

@skippingrock: It's definitely a difficult balance. I'm not sure that "the most secure by default" is the best though. If we take that to it's logical conclusion, I think you and I might even hate it. Just try Auto-Lock set to 1 minute and you'll see what I mean. ;)

But there are some lines we don't want to cross. The reason Touch ID is off by default even though it is secure and incredibly useful is that we believe that the user should not have to opt-out of storing their Master Password in the iOS Keychain. This is something that should be only in our brains by default.

I also think that just by virtue of participating in this discussion, we're self-selecting as serious 1Password users. I'll turn that on its head and try to advocate for a less-invested 1Password user who maybe has it only on their iPhone to start...and then I can definitely see how it might be nice to be able to send a password from there to the Mac without installing (or buying) anything else. Not sure that's the use case we should design for, but I thought it was important to acknowledge that.

That said, I tend to agree with you. I just wanted to recognize that our personal preferences may not represent the greater population. :glasses:

Loa

I'm heavily invested into 1Password and trying to find relevant information regarding the security of Universal Clipboard.

Universal Clipboard is the first solution to a problem I had for a long time. I have Mac/PCs which is work related (both managed and unmanaged). And I don't want to share my 1Password with these computers, my biggest fear would be that someone would have file access to my keystore and thus be able to crack my 1Password offline. Thus gaining access to everything. I use hardware 2-factor everywhere I can so even if I lost a single password for one of these services it would not matter (I hope).

I have looked into features like emulating a bluetooth HID keyboard to be able to send passwords from my "trusted" iPhone to any computer (still looking). It's possible on rooted iPhones and also Androids, but I don't want to root my iPhone for fear of security.

It would be nice if 1Password could develop a client that is only able to get passwords "pushed" to it, preferably with one-time-password auth so my 1Password account never is used on the computer itself.

But until we find the perfect solution to all this, please don't disable Universal Clipboard without a way of opting-in.

AGAlumB

@Loa: That's really interesting. I think that with Universal Clipboard as a headline feature of iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, it probably makes sense to at least keep it as an option — perhaps opt-in. We'll continue to evaluate what might be the best balance to help the most people. Thanks so much for the feedback on this! :)