Password Management Services Vulnerable to Attack
Should you trust an online service to store your online passwords?
According to a study at the University of California, Berkeley, web-based password manager services have significant flaws and are vulnerable to attack. A paper, titled “The Emperor's New Password Manager: Security Analysis of Web-based Password Managers” by Zhiwei Li, Warren He, Devdatta Akhawe, and Dawn Song, details the study of five popular password management services.
The report states, “… in four out of the five password managers we studied, an attacker can learn a user's credentials for arbitrary websites. We find vulnerabilities in diverse features like one-time passwords, bookmarklets, and shared passwords.”
Password managers have gained popularity as a means for avoiding the proliferation of many different passwords for many different websites. Authentication with the password manager service opens all the user's online accounts. Unfortunately, an intruder who gains access to the password manager thus gains access to the user's entire Internet presence.
Most of the services tested in the study responded quickly to the feedback, patching vulnerabilities discovered in the research; however, the authors of the study point out that their investigation was by no means comprehensive, and other vulnerabilities might also exist. Further study will lead to an automated solution that will lead to more complete vulnerability testing. In the meantime, if you decide to go without the services of a password manager, keep in mind that the age-old practices such tools were developed to prevent, such as using the same password for all your accounts or writing your password on a Post-it note stuck to your desk, probably will not offer a greater degree of protection.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.