2022-12-24 · timestamps by ADAtainment
UPD 12/24/2022
- A Christmas Eve warning about the LastPass breach, a password manager recommended in the past.
- Attackers obtained every encrypted vault of all 33 million users, so the only remaining barrier is guessing each master password.
- The vault metadata was not encrypted, letting attackers build a priority queue targeting high value people like crypto holders.
- The breach cannot be undone by changing the master password, so every stored password and secret should be rotated and treated as compromised.
- Bitwarden is recommended as an open source alternative, and the episode is a case for client side PGP encryption, which Lace will support for paper wallets.
15 entries
On Christmas Eve, warn that LastPass, a password manager recommended for years, has been hacked.
Adopted LastPass long ago from listening to Steve Gibson and Security Now on the twit network.
LastPass works by running a master password through PBKDF2, splitting it into an encryption key and a vault identifier.
The vaults are encrypted with AES 256, but the attacker obtained all of them, so they only need to guess each master password.
PBKDF2 makes brute forcing long passwords expensive, since each guess runs a slow function rather than a simple hash check.
The company had claimed vaults were indistinguishable, but the vault metadata is not encrypted, undermining that trust.
With that metadata, attackers can build a priority queue to target the highest value vaults first.
The breach cannot be fixed by changing the master password, so every password in the vault must be assumed public and rotated.
Any banking details, PGP keys, or crypto seed words stored in the private notes must be treated as compromised.
Losing all 33 million vaults at once signals poor storage and access control procedures, whatever the encryption implementation.
Disgusted after years of trusting and recommending them, the apology email was the most asinine one imaginable.
Bitwarden is the recommended alternative: open source, better infosec people, good pricing, and a free tier.
Client side PGP encryption would have made a vault leak a non issue, and Lace will support PGP encryption of paper wallets.
As a challenge, a paper wallet holding about a million dollars of ada encrypted with PGP will be posted publicly on Twitter to break.
Any LastPass user should migrate now, rotate passwords, and change any stored credit card numbers as a precaution.