I apologise for my immense lack of knowledge of current password storage applications (i'm not a programmer and come here for the other stuff), but what is the benefit of these services (lastpass etc)? This is a genuine question.
It seems to me that instead of having several passwords in my head (i can remember random long strings of characters pretty well, and have a heirachy of randomness/longness depending on what I care about), I only have to remember one. But if that one's compromised, aren't all the rest then available?
Reminds me of the bit in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy (life the universe and everything i think) where passwords and biometrics etc had become really difficult and secure, so a datacube thing was created to store them all. Which was then found by a character before hilarity ensued.
1. Your physical machine, or the LastPass/Dropbox server.
2. Your master password
3. (optionally) a second-factor auth source
Then yes, they have access to all your passwords. But this is vastly superior to having one password that alone compromised grants access to all of your accounts, right?
I mean, the most secure way imaginable would be perfect biometric signatures, or humans smart enough that they could perform asymmetric encryption in their heads to sign challenges in a verifiable manner. Outside of that, this is decentish.
You could use a text file in a Truecrypt volume with keys that are stored on separate jumpdrives (but what if someone compromises a machine that you plug those drives into), etc, etc.
It seems to me that instead of having several passwords in my head (i can remember random long strings of characters pretty well, and have a heirachy of randomness/longness depending on what I care about), I only have to remember one. But if that one's compromised, aren't all the rest then available?
Reminds me of the bit in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy (life the universe and everything i think) where passwords and biometrics etc had become really difficult and secure, so a datacube thing was created to store them all. Which was then found by a character before hilarity ensued.
thanks