I don't use them. I see this as a putting all eggs in one basket strategy, if my master password was lost, hacked, hosting company shutdown, or for whatever reason refuse to do business with me, my entire life would be screwed.
Instead I use long passwords made of words, and for each site it will be a few letters off. They're easy for humans to remember because how similar they are, but due how hash works they are equivalent to unique passwords to hackers.
Hashing only works if the website stores their passwords correctly. If a single website you use doesn't hash passwords correctly, and gets their database leaked, then your passwords will all be leaked. Changing a few characters per site may help a bit, but it shouldn't be relied on.
Also, if you're worried about the host shutting down, you should try bitwarden. It's completely open source, and you can self host it if you want.
Changing even a single letter will completely scramble your password with hash, so for all intents and purpose it is equivalent to a unique password
Though I do admit it can get a bit tedious, I'll definitly look into self-hosting, thanks for the recommendation
Password are leaked all the time. You are trusting the website with your password, but won't trust a password manager.
There are self hosted versions of password managers that solve the issues you described. Just read the comments here, some great recommendations.
Password managers holds the key to all my other accounts, where as a random poorly secured site do not. Of course I will have less trust in a password host, a compromised host means I also lose my banking and work account, but if a hacker got my free-manga.net password, well they can enjoy my shitty isekai collection for all I care.
The biggest security issue was always shared password leads to poorly secured site compromising highly secured sites, and thats why unique passwords are important. You might be thinking the change-one-letter password is similar to sharing password, but that is just not how hash works.
Password managers holds the key to all my other accounts, where as a random poorly secured site do not
You admitted your passwords are not unique or random, so they do in fact have a definite insight into your other passwords.
a compromised host means I also lose my banking and work account
All password managers recommended in this thread use the master password to encrypt your data.
a compromised host
As suiggested, there are self-hosted versions of these password managers so you don't necessarily need to trust a host
but that is just not how hash works
You are holding onto the "hash" premise but you aren't guarenteed that your passwords are being hashed. As I said before, if a site is compromised and your not-random password is leaked, you are vulnerable to having all of your accounts exposed.
I think you are set in your ways, I have tried to enlighten you. I hope your choices don't come back to bite you in the future.
if you're interested, look up how modern encryption and password cracking works. Theres really no way for me to explain why what I'm doing is more secure than a manager when you don't even know what "unique" or "random" means in encryption, let alone how to maximize them for security.
In anycase thanks for all the suggestions
I totally understand. I think you're missing my point.
I am willing to bet multiple sites we both signed up store their passwords in cleartext (or unsalted hashes, or broken hashing methods).
So the attackers now have one of our passwords. They may even have a number of our passwords. In my case, using a password manager, the attacker has multiple completely random strings that I have used as passwords. In your case, the attacker has 2 passwords that look very much the same, although a little changed. You are now screwed.
Then you should know that attackers don't take your plain-text or cracked password and the start manually guessing similar codes on your other accounts, unless they are exactly the same. They always need to get a copy of your password (we'll assume its hashed), then start the guess work using a decoder.
How secure your password is to the program depend on its entropy, which depends on the password's length and possible characters. Two passwords are either exactly the same or completely different, and not how similar it "looks" to human.
Now, obviously if you make a easy-to-guess scramble (e.g. password123 becomes password123facebook for, well, facebook) then the hacker can do a custom decoder and this does compromise security. There are a lot of little tricks to avoid this, in anycase it will be secure as long as you maintain a high entropy.
Then you should know that attackers don’t take your plain-text or cracked password and the start manually guessing similar codes on your other accounts
Oh they absolutely do.
You keep going back to hashing methodology. I totally agree that if the website hashes your password correctly, its unlikely to be compromised.
That said, you are trusting the website in that regard, when it has been repeatedly proven that there are sites, even large ones, have exposed passwords.
You said at the beginning of this thread that you can't trust password managers to manage your password correctly. But you trust random websites with that password instead.
So put your hashing discussion to one side, and think of the scenerio where your passwords are not encrypted. Because you can't guarentee that they are.
What got me into this discussion was your comment
Changing even a single letter will completely scramble your password with hash, so for all intents and purpose it is equivalent to a unique password
It is just such bad advice. Anyone who thinks changing a few letters in their password used accross multiple sites deserves to be hacked.
Edit: I'm going to stop here. I don't think I'm getting through. Thanks for the chat.
I’ll just finish off with a few more points
If your password is unencrypted or poorly encrypted, having a random string vs custom password makes no difference. The whole point of unique and strong password is so that a poorly encrypted service does not compromise your properly encrypted service. The scenario where my password is unencrypted is irrelevant, because only the salted hashed password matters. And because of the hash, leaking unencrypted passwords does not make the hashed ones easier to guess.
The whole issue with a manager isn’t that its bad, its that it puts everything under the one basket, even if its a hella strong basket. If you want to change my mind, you need to show the pros outweigh the cons. Straight up assuming that not using a manager somehow means anytime I have my password compromised equals everything else is compromised is not convincing, its circular reasoning.
Ignoring the fact that I’m explaining how hash works and not giving advice, if we want to be technical then yes only a slight change does make targeted attack easier. At that point password will only provide so much security, if you want to truely be safe, grade separate your username and email.
Thanks for the chat too, have a nice day
Edit: grammar
No they are not.
Also, KeePassXC is an open-source project that saves your password database (encrypted) in a local file. So no company can stop doing business with you. I then use syncthing to sync the database to all devices without using cloud. An excellent solution for sligthly paranoid people :D
I don't use them. I see this as a putting all eggs in one basket strategy, if my master password was lost, hacked, hosting company shutdown, or for whatever reason refuse to do business with me, my entire life would be screwed.
Instead I use long passwords made of words, and for each site it will be a few letters off. They're easy for humans to remember because how similar they are, but due how hash works they are equivalent to unique passwords to hackers.
Hashing only works if the website stores their passwords correctly. If a single website you use doesn't hash passwords correctly, and gets their database leaked, then your passwords will all be leaked. Changing a few characters per site may help a bit, but it shouldn't be relied on.
Also, if you're worried about the host shutting down, you should try bitwarden. It's completely open source, and you can self host it if you want.
Changing even a single letter will completely scramble your password with hash, so for all intents and purpose it is equivalent to a unique password
Though I do admit it can get a bit tedious, I'll definitly look into self-hosting, thanks for the recommendation
Password are leaked all the time. You are trusting the website with your password, but won't trust a password manager.
There are self hosted versions of password managers that solve the issues you described. Just read the comments here, some great recommendations.
Password managers holds the key to all my other accounts, where as a random poorly secured site do not. Of course I will have less trust in a password host, a compromised host means I also lose my banking and work account, but if a hacker got my free-manga.net password, well they can enjoy my shitty isekai collection for all I care.
The biggest security issue was always shared password leads to poorly secured site compromising highly secured sites, and thats why unique passwords are important. You might be thinking the change-one-letter password is similar to sharing password, but that is just not how hash works.
You admitted your passwords are not unique or random, so they do in fact have a definite insight into your other passwords.
All password managers recommended in this thread use the master password to encrypt your data.
As suiggested, there are self-hosted versions of these password managers so you don't necessarily need to trust a host
You are holding onto the "hash" premise but you aren't guarenteed that your passwords are being hashed. As I said before, if a site is compromised and your not-random password is leaked, you are vulnerable to having all of your accounts exposed.
I think you are set in your ways, I have tried to enlighten you. I hope your choices don't come back to bite you in the future.
if you're interested, look up how modern encryption and password cracking works. Theres really no way for me to explain why what I'm doing is more secure than a manager when you don't even know what "unique" or "random" means in encryption, let alone how to maximize them for security.
In anycase thanks for all the suggestions
I totally understand. I think you're missing my point.
I am willing to bet multiple sites we both signed up store their passwords in cleartext (or unsalted hashes, or broken hashing methods).
So the attackers now have one of our passwords. They may even have a number of our passwords. In my case, using a password manager, the attacker has multiple completely random strings that I have used as passwords. In your case, the attacker has 2 passwords that look very much the same, although a little changed. You are now screwed.
Then you should know that attackers don't take your plain-text or cracked password and the start manually guessing similar codes on your other accounts, unless they are exactly the same. They always need to get a copy of your password (we'll assume its hashed), then start the guess work using a decoder.
How secure your password is to the program depend on its entropy, which depends on the password's length and possible characters. Two passwords are either exactly the same or completely different, and not how similar it "looks" to human.
Now, obviously if you make a easy-to-guess scramble (e.g. password123 becomes password123facebook for, well, facebook) then the hacker can do a custom decoder and this does compromise security. There are a lot of little tricks to avoid this, in anycase it will be secure as long as you maintain a high entropy.
Oh they absolutely do.
You keep going back to hashing methodology. I totally agree that if the website hashes your password correctly, its unlikely to be compromised.
That said, you are trusting the website in that regard, when it has been repeatedly proven that there are sites, even large ones, have exposed passwords.
You said at the beginning of this thread that you can't trust password managers to manage your password correctly. But you trust random websites with that password instead.
So put your hashing discussion to one side, and think of the scenerio where your passwords are not encrypted. Because you can't guarentee that they are.
What got me into this discussion was your comment
It is just such bad advice. Anyone who thinks changing a few letters in their password used accross multiple sites deserves to be hacked.
Edit: I'm going to stop here. I don't think I'm getting through. Thanks for the chat.
I’ll just finish off with a few more points
If your password is unencrypted or poorly encrypted, having a random string vs custom password makes no difference. The whole point of unique and strong password is so that a poorly encrypted service does not compromise your properly encrypted service. The scenario where my password is unencrypted is irrelevant, because only the salted hashed password matters. And because of the hash, leaking unencrypted passwords does not make the hashed ones easier to guess.
The whole issue with a manager isn’t that its bad, its that it puts everything under the one basket, even if its a hella strong basket. If you want to change my mind, you need to show the pros outweigh the cons. Straight up assuming that not using a manager somehow means anytime I have my password compromised equals everything else is compromised is not convincing, its circular reasoning.
Ignoring the fact that I’m explaining how hash works and not giving advice, if we want to be technical then yes only a slight change does make targeted attack easier. At that point password will only provide so much security, if you want to truely be safe, grade separate your username and email.
Thanks for the chat too, have a nice day
Edit: grammar
No they are not.
Also, KeePassXC is an open-source project that saves your password database (encrypted) in a local file. So no company can stop doing business with you. I then use syncthing to sync the database to all devices without using cloud. An excellent solution for sligthly paranoid people :D