pam-duress VS KeePass2.x

On Linux, there’s pam-duress: https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress

Multi-step timeout would be a good alternative, especially for mobile. For desktop, I have this awesome PAM set up to remove everything associated with my regular user account.

It's actually quite simple and readily available with PAM duress [0] (at least on Linux, I'm not sure about PAM on Mac). It was also discussed here already [1]. Still, you should consider that doing so might not work in your favor.

[0] https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28267975

# Copyright 1999-2022 Gentoo Authors # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 EAPI=8 inherit pam toolchain-funcs VER_COMMIT="04e607f9ab674c8dbbf27ea8bb59158178a72f69" DESCRIPTION="A PAM module enabling special 'duress' passwords that will execute arbitrary scripts" HOMEPAGE="https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress" SRC_URI="https://github.com/nuvious/${PN}/archive/${VER_COMMIT}.tar.gz -> ${P}.tar.gz" LICENSE="LGPL-3" SLOT="0" KEYWORDS="~amd64" IUSE="debug" DEPENDS="dev-libs/openssl sys-libs/pam" RDEPENDS="${DEPENDS}" S="${WORKDIR}/pam-duress-${VER_COMMIT}" src_prepare() { default sed -e "/^CC :=/s|:= .*|:= $(tc-getCC)|" -e "/^CFLAGS :=/s|-O2|${CFLAGS}|" \ -i Makefile || die } src_compile() { emake $(use debug && echo "debug") } src_install() { dobin bin/duress_sign dobin bin/pam_test dopammod bin/pam_duress.so einstalldocs }

Using https://github.com/xmidt-org/dms & https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress to shred LUKS headers: https://www.buskill.in/luks-self-destruct/

maybe https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress

This repo gives you one such tool. It triggers a script when a specific password is used, and can then hand over control to the usual unlocking process or not (as you asked for). The script is whatever you want: taking a pic, maybe transmit it over the internet, possibly including live video, audio and location, distress message, etc. The script can also erase the app, itself and the log entries, then unlocking as if nothing had happend. A downside is that, at least from the repo description and instructions, the Duress action triggers on specific user and password, not on anything but the correct combination. Still, you asked for specific user and password.

So far, I've only come across one solution for Linux, called PAM Duress. It executes a script when you log in, so you'd probably need to add some actions that make the files unavailable. I haven't used it myself, as I'm a Windows user.

And the best part is there are solutions already that do this: https://keepass.info/

Does it work on Android or iOS?

🔗 KeePass

When you're at a point where you're relying on a display name to make security-critical decisions, you've already lost.

Character substitutions like ķeepass or ƙeepass or keypass are at least possible to spot if you know the name of the product, but not the full URL.

But there are many ways to create lookalike domains that don't change the product name: https://keepass.org https://keepass.net https://keepass.info https://keepass.cx https://keepassxc.org https://keepass-info.net https://keepass-manager.com

Which of these is the correct one? (It's https://keepassxc.org of course, but just looking at the URL won't tell you that.)

The root cause is downloading software you see advertised on Google even though that does not in any way establish trustworthiness.

> People love to hate on passwords but the reality is that for many circumstances (threat models) they are the best compromise. You can make them more than strong enough (take 32+ bytes out of /dev/random and encode however you like, nobody will ever brute force that in this universe) and various passwords managers solve the problem of re-use (never reuse a password).

> And it comes with the benefit that you control how it is stored and can apply as much redundancy as you want to feel comfortable.

Honestly, I agree! I used KeePass back in the day (https://keepass.info/) but now use KeePassXC (https://keepassxc.org/) and it's really nice - I don't know any of my passwords because they're all randomly generated and are pretty secure. The only one I have to remember is my main password for decrypting the safe, which I also wrote down and entrusted to someone close to me due to its complexity.

It honestly works great, software to interact with the password safe is on every platform where I need it to be, in addition to it being super easy to reason about storage, because it's basically just a file - that I can then put on self-hosted Nextcloud, or another solution like that, or USB sticks or burn to CDs for all I care.

Maybe I should also migrate all of my TOTP stuff over to it and look into good Android apps at some point, then I wouldn't quite need Google Authenticator or FreeOTP anymore, either.

If you have used this combo at many sites (which is of course not recommended) then download one of the available free Password Managers like Keepass, Bitwarden, Lastpass or any others you can find with a Google Search

I also tried out KeePass for a little bit but prefer the BitWarden apps. The key thing here is don't store your passwords in the cloud as they are massive target for hackers.

There are various Keepass add-ons, but I prefer the standalone version.

Best KeePass Windows desktop client: KeePass

If though you can't stand the idea of your password vault on a 3rd party server then you can use an offline password manager like KeePass. Of course, you have to take responsibility for making and storing backups of your vault in case something happens to your device. Fortunately, Syncthing can make this pretty trivial.