[Cryptography] Security weakness in iCloud keychain
Kent Borg
kentborg at borg.org
Tue May 8 17:30:56 EDT 2018
At the end you answer a key question: You would still have me entering
passwords, but where my example had me entering a half dozen different
passwords, you say I would enter just one.
You aren't getting rid of passwords, you are just coming up with a way
to make recycling a single grand master password safe.
Or, safer. It seems you are only aiming to solve the problem of some
website leaking plaintext of a recycled password.
But back to One Master Password: I don't want that.
Two immediate reasons:
- I don't trust all the devices and keyboards in my life with such a
powerful password. I don't trust that they are honest, I don't trust
they are competent.
- I currently don't much worry about shoulder-surfing, most passwords
I enter aren't that important, but there are a few which are, and then I
do worry who is behind me and whether there could be a camera above me.
Granted, the immediate utility of a Russian mobster learning this
password is limited, but still a not something I welcome.
A related question: Would there ever be a case where this master
password you imagine would actually be an encryption key? That is, would
I have to worry about encrypted copy of any data leaking into a parallel
key attack? If so, the master password would have to be a nasty one with
lots of entropy in it.
I see other problems, but this seems a good start.
-kb
More information about the cryptography
mailing list