Import Firefox Passwords

[klepto]

Hello,

I've been using your program diligently for a few months now and imported/exported with no problem.
For years I had used firefox password manager but I would like to use yours permenantly. I've read the
todos but I didn't see it. Import firefox passwords so I can be done with it once and for all.

Btw.  How safe is the .rdf file? Let's say someone wanted to reverse engineer it to gain the master password.

Just curious.

Thanks for this great program, and I also use your foxyproxy for with tor/privoxy.
I'd like foxyproxy to be able to use proxy for all except selected urls =)

[Eric H. Jung]

Hi Klepto,

Import firefox passwords so I can be done with it once and for all.

There is currently no way to do this automatically.

Btw. How safe is the .rdf file? Let's say someone wanted to reverse engineer it to gain the master password.

This depends on which hash algorithm you've chosen and the complexity of the master password. However, regardless of which algorithm you've chosen and the complexity of the master password, it can be shown through a mathematical proof that many lifetimes of computing power would be needed to reverse engineer your master password from the (salted) hash.

Regards,
Eric

[Miquel 'Fire' Burns]

Oh, and if you save the master password to disk, they have access to it.

[thibros]

And if you don't save it to disk, the only way to possibly guess or brute force it would be if they have the settings (rdf file) AND a password generated by those settings. Those aren't stored anywhere. So the rdf file alone is worthless, except it gives a hint which pages you use. IF you store your own passwords in the rdf file, those are encoded by a standard encryption and COULD be guessed/brute forced to find the master password, if someone knows how to do it efficiently.

So in any case, don't choose a master password that is too weak, like "qwerty" or "12345", to give some really bad examples.

[Eric H. Jung]

the only way to possibly guess or brute force it would be if they have the settings (rdf file) AND a password generated by those settings.

Most definitely untrue.

IF you store your own passwords in the rdf file, those are encoded by a standard encryption and COULD be guessed/brute forced to find the master password, if someone knows how to do it efficiently.

Again: not true. Do a little research on message digests/cryptographic hash algorithms, it only takes 10 minutes. You will learn that knowledge of one or more hashes does not help in any way to determine the input to the algorithm or other possible hashes (outputs).

If you referring to the passwords stored when using "Other auto-populate fields", then yes, these can be deciphered because they are not generated with hash algorithms...they are user-generated and encrypted with symmetric encryption. However, native passwordmaker-generated passwords are effectively uncrackable using current technology and reasonable time constraints. This is all covered on the main website and the FAQ.

[tanstaafl]

Import firefox passwords so I can be done with it once and for all.

There is currently no way to do this automatically.

Eric - are you interested in this as a FR (personally I'm not, but can see where others might be)? If so I'll add it...

[Eric H. Jung]

You can add it and if people start voting for it, then we'll consider it. Obviously, add a vote for it from klepto.

[thibros]

Again: not true. Do a little research on message digests/cryptographic hash algorithms, it only takes 10 minutes. You will learn that knowledge of one or more hashes does not help in any way to determine the input to the algorithm or other possible hashes (outputs).

[...] However, native passwordmaker-generated passwords are effectively uncrackable using current technology and reasonable time constraints.

Sorry I didn't make myself clear enough. I do know a bit about cryptography, and I was not referring to any kind of reverse algorithm. That's why I said 'could' instead of 'can'. It all depends. And this is all assuming that your settings (cookie or rdf file) and at least one stored or generated password are revealed.

I was referring to running a dictionary through the algorithm (guessing) or running all possible combinations of letters, numbers and symbols, starting with short passwords through it (brute force). A fast modern PC can easily calculate about 10 million passwords per second and compare the hashes. So as an example a mixed password of length 6 (letters (upper and lower) and numbers) takes 90 minutes to find, if you make the length 8, it takes 250 days. But if it's only 8 lowercase letters, it's done in 6 hours. And these are random letters, it's no dictionary word.

A supercomputer (or a cluster) checks up to a billion passwords per second, distributed.net's project reached 76 billions/sec once. You do the math.

This applies to almost every kind of encryption, although for example MD5 is much faster to calculate (150 MB/sec) than SHA-512 (8 MB/sec), so every example has to be taken with care. Rijndael and RipeMD-160 compute at about 30 MB/sec and Sha-1 at 50 MB/sec (in this context an 850MHz x86). Btw, the plain passwords are encrypted in Rijndael in the rdf file, if I'm not mistaken, that's why I include it here.

Maybe you want a recommendation, but it all depends on whether you want just some general protection, or if you fear someone might want to use all his resources to crack your password. If you really want to be on the secure side, either take care that you never store any settings anywhere, or use a master password of at least length 10, with digits, letters and a symbol. If you do it this way, every argument about your passwords being secure hold.

But even if you use PasswordMaker in a normal way even with a relatively weak password, the risk you're taking is quite small, and by using the generated passwords you're much safer than almost all of the other internet users. Unless someone personally attacks you.

This is all covered on the main website and the FAQ.

I'm actually thinking of proposing (and writing) a new section concerning general concerns about internet security, passwords, cryptography and the like, and how PasswordMaker fits into this. Most information I find is either too general ("If you use this, you're safe"), too scary (worst case scenarios) or too technical (like wikipedia) to be useful, so I want to come up with something new. Suggestions etc. are welcome of course.

[Eric H. Jung]

You do the math.

OK, let's do it together.

The master password and password character set both support the full UTF-8 character set. This means there are hundreds of thousands of possible glyphs for each password position (due to multiple writing systems... Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, etc (sorry, no Egyptian hieroglyphs in Unicode )).

For the moment, let's "do the math" for an American PasswordMaker user. Let's suppose he speaks English as his first language and uses an US 104-key keyboard... so no umlauts, diacritical marks, euro symbol, British pound symbol, etc. in his characters. In fact, let's say he leaves the character set as the base93 ASCII characters which PasswordMaker uses as its default but simply rearranges their order. He also chooses an 8-character master password from the same base93 character set. So we have:

Code: [Select]

master password combinations = 93^8 = 5,595,818,096,650,401 (over 5 quadrillion)
character set combinations = 93^93 = 1.1719638492654442104175825877512e+183Adding these together we have... well let's just say 1.1719638492654442104175825877512e+183. Now let's be optimistic for the attacker and say we expect the brute force attack to find a match after iterating through just 50% of the combinations. 1.1719638492654442104175825877512e+183 divided by 2 is 5.859819246327221052087912938755e+182 according to my Windows calculator.

A fast modern PC can easily calculate about 10 million passwords per second

5.859819246327221052087912938755e+182 / 10,000,000 = 5.859819246327221052087912938755e+175 seconds or 1.8581364936349635502561875122891e+168 years.

A supercomputer (or a cluster) checks up to a billion passwords per second

5.859819246327221052087912938755e+182 / 1,000,000,000 =
  5.859819246327221052087912938755e+173 seconds or 1.8581364936349635502561875122891e+166 years.

distributed.net's project reached 76 billions/sec once

5.859819246327221052087912938755e+182 / 76,000,000,000 =
  7.7102884820095013843262012352039e+171 seconds or 2.4449164389933730924423519898541e+164 years.

This is longer than the current lifetime of the universe. Even if you started the attack during the big bang (approx 13.7 billion years ago), you wouldn't be anywhere near finished today.

Note this assumes the user doesn't use modifier, suffix, prefix, leet, and that he doesn't use non-English characters. If he did, solving the problem would take even longer. Please let me know if my math is incorrect--math was never one of my strongpoints, so I wouldn't be surprised if I did something wrong.

I'm actually thinking of proposing (and writing) a new section concerning general concerns about internet security, passwords, cryptography and the like, and how PasswordMaker fits into this. Most information I find is either too general ("If you use this, you're safe"), too scary (worst case scenarios) or too technical (like wikipedia) to be useful, so I want to come up with something new. Suggestions etc. are welcome of course.

This would be most welcome! Do you have scp access to the website so you can make changes?

[tanstaafl]

OK, let's do it together.

Great, thanks, now my head hurts...

[tanstaafl]

You can add it and if people start voting for it, then we'll consider it. Obviously, add a vote for it from klepto.

Done...

[Eric H. Jung]

Still waiting for someone to check my math!!

[tanstaafl]

Still waiting for someone to check my math!!

Just trying to follow what you wrote made my head hurt - if I tried to CHECK your math, it would probably explode!

 

[Eric H. Jung]

Tha't's OK. Thanks for trying. Maybe Thibros will give it a whirl. My biggest assumption is that someone chooses a cryptographically secure random master password. Most people don't do this; they choose their pet's name, so dictionary-based bruce-force attacks cut the 50% estimate of all permutations down tremendously. This is how the engima was cracked in WW2.

[thibros]

I will check your math soon. Well, my "you do the math" was meant ironically, but since we started, this might get interesting. I'm actually very busy at work now, even on the weekends, but this will be a nice change to think of something else.

The story of cracking the enigma was a bit more complicated, as I recall, but you're right, most people choose also "qwerty" or "12345" or "password" as their password. My first password I ever used was "thibros", of course. Back in 1988, don't use it any more.

We both made quite a few assumptions, and different ones, that's why our results are different. But let me get back on this tomorrow, I hope.