Lastpass.Com Potentially Compromised, Users Urged To Change Master Passwords

[olivier2553]

What the heck does "salt" mean in this context?

Only FunkyGuru gave you the correct answer:

http://en.wikipedia....t_(cryptography)

Not much in fact...

Salt is a piece of random characters added to your password.

If two users choose the same password, they hopefully get a different salt, so whatever is saved encrypted will look different between your password and his. And even if you get access to both encrypted passwords, you will not be able to guess that the other guy uses the same password as you.

User Cleartext password Salt Crypted password

Alice apple AB ABtr54^%T

Bob apple CD CDijy^%g5

The server will save the passwords as:

Alice:ABtr54^%T

Bob:CDijy^%g5

Seeing this file, you cannot guess Alice and Bob use the same password...

[manarak]

users, use your brain.

anything that is stored in the "cloud" is hackable.

This is true. But it's not really a question of whether it's 'hackable.' Of course it is, otherwise there would be no need to encrypt the information. The real issue is whether the information is decryptable in any practical sense. Given a strong master password the risk is negligible.

No, the risk is not negligible.

There is a specific risk of storing info in a location that is not under your control and is accessible by internet.

Trojan keyloggers can spy on your master password and send it out to the guys on the net.

Not only is the storage attackable from the outside, but those cloud storage sites have admins and developers who know every detail of the mechanisms used.

Those persons need money... like everybody.

Everyone believes in anti-virus software.

But custom-made trojans cannot be detected by security software.

If the user was ever to become a specific target of a third party, the stuff in the cloud will be among the first things that get cracked.

Journalists, Scientists, Politicians, Businessmen...

If you want your data to remain confidential, don't use the cloud, period.

[pomeloseed]

my passwords were seriously breached 9 months ago. Awhile after that, I began using LastPass, but now I'll be roundly annoyed at LastPass, if my sites get compromised again. When I saw the alert on T.Visa, I immediatly went to LastPass to try and change my master password (5 minutes ago) but I couldn't get it done, probably because they say on their site that they're experiencing too much traffic. Plus I didn't see a specific prompt for changing master password. I'm not a lawsuit type of person, but it's tempting to file a lawsuit against a company that claims in large bold font "This Is The Last Password You'll Ever Need!" ....and how extremely secure their operation is ......and then this crap happens. My trust in LastPass is down the drain.

[MKAsok]

If you want your data to remain confidential, don't use the cloud, period.

If you change the word 'cloud' to the word 'internet' you might have an argument approaching some form of reality. There is an acceptable balance between convenience and risk that you appear to be missing here.

[Crushdepth]

If you want your data to remain confidential, don't use the cloud, period.

Actually you can - but you need to encrypt the data before it leaves your machine. Jungledisk is an excellent cloud storage front end to Amazon S3 that allows you to (optionally) encrypt/decrypt data on your machine. Drop box is supposedly working on it too due to recent criticism.

You can also move to 2-factor authentication, eg. a password + a hardware token you carry, where you need both to login or access the data. Doesn't have to cost much (eg. Yubikey). Basically, passwords by themselves are very poor security, unless you are using random ones and using a password manager to remember them for you.

Edited May 6, 2011 by Crushdepth

[somchai69]

sorry, storing your passwords out in the Web

is like leaving your wallet lying around and hoping no-one

steals the money or credit cards.

[sulasno]

If you want your data to remain confidential, don't use the cloud, period.

Actually you can - but you need to encrypt the data before it leaves your machine. Jungledisk is an excellent cloud storage front end to Amazon S3 that allows you to (optionally) encrypt/decrypt data on your machine. Drop box is supposedly working on it too due to recent criticism.

You can also move to 2-factor authentication, eg. a password + a hardware token you carry, where you need both to login or access the data. Doesn't have to cost much (eg. Yubikey). Basically, passwords by themselves are very poor security, unless you are using random ones and using a password manager to remember them for you.

thanks for the link; looks interesting

[huma79]

No, the risk is not negligible.

There is a specific risk of storing info in a location that is not under your control and is accessible by internet.

Arguably, 99% of the time users who are storing info under their own control have a vector that is open to an information breach, whether they know it or not. The reason why a service like lastpass works (if they are worth their salt, pardon the pun) is that they are dedicated mitigating these security vectors. No, it's not perfect. But it's the less flawed solution.

Trojan keyloggers can spy on your master password and send it out to the guys on the net.

Yes, but this is because single password signon for authentication is inherently flawed, and has nothing to do with lastpass itself. Actually, something like lastpass is safer in this regard because they provide ways to defeat keyloggers - software keyboard signon, one time usage passwords, and physical security keys.

Not only is the storage attackable from the outside, but those cloud storage sites have admins and developers who know every detail of the mechanisms used.

Those persons need money... like everybody.

Again, if the company knows anything about security (which I would hope, considering it's their business), they will have implemented a separation of duties as well as job rotations, so that no single rogue employee could access the data.

Everyone believes in anti-virus software.

But custom-made trojans cannot be detected by security software.

This is getting a bit off-topic, but this is not really true.. Good antivirus software with heuristics can detect a good portion of 0-day malware.

[PattayaPete]

I am still quite happy with lastpas, perhaps even happier than before. If you study and understand what lastpass are doing with security then its clear if you follow the one single most important piece of advice they give then you won't have a problem. That advice is to have a STRONG master password. Any data stolen from lastpass is gibberish without the master password. Lastpass do not store or even know or even have any way to work out what that master password is. Only you know and in my case the only place it appears is in my brain. My brain can't store much but it does have room for one crazy and very strong password.

The only way any data MAY have been compromised is if someone had a weak master password. That is then cracked by trying every possibility of password or a brute force attack. If your password is fairly simple like say "dog" it would be cracked quite quickly. If your password was say "xz$76&tYEz1a" then even a supercomputer trying a brute force attack would not get it right in a million years of continuous operation.

The company did the right thing in releasing this information even though most people are wildly over reacting. The problem is that no matter how much you say it, some users will have weak passwords. That is out of lastpass's control but if some data is compromised because of a users stupidity, lastpass will still get the blame. Kudos to them for being honest even though it will no doubt hurt them and no sweat for me with my un crackable master password.

[TAWP]

Free password management program LastPass, a browser extension that manages passwords and automates form filling, has been subjected to an external attack which could see user email addresses, their server salt and salted password hashes stolen by attackers.

What the heck does "salt" mean in this context?

If you understand the concept of Public Key Private key, it will explain. If not, here is my humble attempt.

Data needs to be encrypted, locked, and for locking you need a key. For unlocking too you need a key.

Now think of a lock, which has two keys. One key can Lock only. Cannot Un Lock. The other, the master key, can do both.

Now this entire concept applied to encrypting date, what happens is a random 'string' or 'phrase' is generated. It is nothing but set of characters in not particular order. They can be anything from a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and all other marks like ?!@#$%%^&*() and so on so forth. This string, is used as a key to lock the data.

In some types of data encryption methods, this key is called 'Salt'.

Sorry forgot to emphasis importance of salt.

If one has access to salt data, he/she can easily open the encrypted data files. It is like having the key to the lock.

I hope I could explain. :jap:

Your explanation is incorrect and mixing several different things.

In short, a good admin has opted to apply a salt to any hashed password being saved.

When you register an account on a website of resonable security your password isn't saved in clear text, it is a hashed representation of it.

But merely saving a hashed representation of a password would allow an attacker to extract the passwordFile [with hashed password] and using a rainbow-file to find any collision, i.e. any combinations of characters that would generate the same hash.

Using this the hacker could then log into your account.

So to add another level of security any admin/developer worth his salary will always apply a 'salt' to the password you define. This could be a trailing selection of characters, a set of characters added ontop of the given characters or anything else that alters your password. This will make the generated hash for the password different.

And when a hacker gains access to the database with hashed passwords and finds a collision in his rainbow file his now assumed password will not allow him access...since the password he writes in the login box will have the secret salt added ontop of the password written and then compared to the database. In effect the hacker has now given the login window your password/or a collisionrepresentation of it with 2 salts added ontop of it = not the same thing that is saved in the DB.

This can be countered by the attacker if he also gains full access to the source-code -- but this is less likely.

It is just another layer of security, not a bullet proof solution.

[TAWP]

If your password is fairly simple like say "dog" it would be cracked quite quickly. If your password was say "xz$76&tYEz1a" then even a supercomputer trying a brute force attack would not get it right in a million years of continuous operation.

Well, not really, that length of a password would allow a hacker to gain access in matter of hours using modern solutions of distributed computing -- or super-farms that NSA reportedly sit on.

But the longer the password the better -- and avoid normal words unless you write a really long password.

A friend of mine always took a habit of writing a sentence. Easy to remember and easily over 40 characters.

[MKAsok]

Well, not really, that length of a password would allow a hacker to gain access in matter of hours using modern solutions of distributed computing -- or super-farms that NSA reportedly sit on.

Approximately 239,366.60 hours or 9,973.61 days given 17 billion tries per hour (1 high spec computer).

If 100,000 computers were used, it would take approximately 2.39 hours.

Source: http://www.mandylionlabs.com/documents/BFTCalc.xls

[bkk_mike]

I really appreciate the OP for the information. :jap: I hadn't heard about this.

Something sounds a little fishy about this. If Lastpass does not store the master password on their servers and staff cannot gain access to master passwords and the password vaults are encrypted, like Lastpass claims. Why the urgency to force change master passwords? How could the master passwords be compromised if they are not stored anywhere? All that could be stolen is a bunch of encrypted files with no keys. Something is not right.

They don't store your password. But they do store a salted (altered) and encrypted version of it.

If that's been stolen (which is what they are suggesting might have happened) AND you have a weak password they can almost certainly break it with a dictionary attack. Even if you have a strong password it's also probably a good idea to change it depending on the availability of rainbow tables for the encryption algorithm that was used.

[Crushdepth]

If you want to avoid the possibility of a repeat of this incident, here's a

[Phil Conners]

I save all confidential data in a TrueCrypt container. That's about as safe as it can get.

[BB1950]

I save all confidential data in a TrueCrypt container. That's about as safe as it can get.

Yes, although it still can be compromised by keyboard and clipboard hijacks.

[asiawatcher]

Never ceases to amaze me how 'resellers' come up with simplistic code doing what any moron who is deaf dumb blind and stupid could do. Wha? Cannot set up an excel file and all the passwords then password protect the file within your own system? Then pay away your money and give third parties, who will obviously be the target of attack, your confidential information? Som num na, you all deserve to lose it all... Idiots.

[Guts]

If you want to avoid the possibility of a repeat of this incident, here's a

Are there Yubikeys for sale in Bangkok?

And if so, do you have to watch out from who you buy those? i.e. a copied version that could compromise security instead...

Guts

[Crushdepth]

You buy Yubikeys directly from the manufacturer's website and have them posted to you. A fake key would be dead easy to spot, because it won't work.

If you are truly paranoid, they provide a utility that will allow you to change the encryption key in the token to a new one, and you can set up your own open-source authentication server if you prefer not to use the ones operated by Yubico. BTW: Yubikeys also work with Truecrypt.

[jfchandler]

This below is my understanding of the situation as well... As long as a LastPass user has a STRONG master password such as one not based on anything in the dictionary, then there should be little risk.

I am still quite happy with lastpas, perhaps even happier than before. If you study and understand what lastpass are doing with security then its clear if you follow the one single most important piece of advice they give then you won't have a problem. That advice is to have a STRONG master password. Any data stolen from lastpass is gibberish without the master password. Lastpass do not store or even know or even have any way to work out what that master password is. Only you know and in my case the only place it appears is in my brain. My brain can't store much but it does have room for one crazy and very strong password.

The only way any data MAY have been compromised is if someone had a weak master password. That is then cracked by trying every possibility of password or a brute force attack. If your password is fairly simple like say "dog" it would be cracked quite quickly. If your password was say "xz$76&tYEz1a" then even a supercomputer trying a brute force attack would not get it right in a million years of continuous operation.

The company did the right thing in releasing this information even though most people are wildly over reacting. The problem is that no matter how much you say it, some users will have weak passwords. That is out of lastpass's control but if some data is compromised because of a users stupidity, lastpass will still get the blame. Kudos to them for being honest even though it will no doubt hurt them and no sweat for me with my un crackable master password.