pass-import VS KeePass2.x

> I always tell these people to just sign up for a password manager and they always resist and say no. I must be missing something obvious.

Maybe they don't want to be relying on a random third-party for all their passwords?

Rather than getting them to sign up for a password manager, what about getting them to install a password manager? I use https://www.passwordstore.org/ - it encrypts your passwords with GPG, and shares the storage via a Git repository for synchronisation between different machines.

That way you can delegate the password handling to another program, e.g. a password manager like pass(1) (https://www.passwordstore.org/) or some interactive graphical prompt.

I want to move to something compatible with https://www.passwordstore.org/ - an open standard for keeping your passwords in a folder encrypted with OpenPGP.

The problem is that I'm nervous to give an unknown Android app and browser plugin total control of my passwords and access to my github account when I don't have time to review it's code properly. I have a bit more trust ing the command line tools, but I'd like to be sure that more people are looking at the code before I trust my life to it.

> Create a system or pattern based on url or brand and mentally hash it into a password.

Doesn't sound very secure. Also when you realize that you anyway have to trust cryptography, I believe it starts making a lot of sense to have an actual cryptographic key and encrypt it with one good random password you learn by heart.

I use pass https://www.passwordstore.org/, which encrypts my passwords with my GPG key, which comes from my Yubikey, which I unlock with a password. That means that I only need to remember one password, and it feels a lot more secure than your pattern based on url or brand.

i use pass and keep my database on a local git repo. it encrypts your passwords with gpg and is a really simple command line program

If you want portability and simplicity, there's a project called simply pass that uses standard *nix utilities (and git, I believe) to manage passwords from CLI.

0. Pass is just text files encrypted with gpg. I needed just one password on one work computer, where I had my gpg key, but not all my passwords. Decrypted the file and that was it.

1. There are plugins and web clients: https://www.passwordstore.org/#extensions

I've been incredibly happy with https://www.passwordstore.org/ for years. The data store is a file hierarchy, with the files themselves encrypted with GPG. Sync is via git. TOTP support with a plugin.

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.