this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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  • Millions of people use password managers. They make accessing online services and bank accounts easy and simplify credit card payments.
  • Many providers promise absolute security – the data is said to be so encrypted that even the providers themselves cannot access it.
  • However, researchers from ETH Zurich have shown that it is possible for hackers to view and even change passwords.
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[–] irate944@piefed.social 21 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Copy pasting a comment that I saw on Reddit

——

Link to the original study (with a less sensationalized title):

https://zkae.io/

A few important notes:

  • the study is about Bitwarden, LastPass, Dashlane and 1Password. Proton Pass isn't mentioned.

  • the study presumes that they're working with a malicious server (read this as compromised server, controlled by an attacker). The attacks they talk about in the article would not work on a normal server. Here's their quote:

No need to panic: all of our attacks presume a malicious server. We have no reason to believe that the password manager vendors are currently malicious or compromised, and as long as things stay that way, your passwords are safe. That said, password managers are high-value targets, and breaches do happen.

  • Here's another quote, about other password managers:

You can ask your provider the following questions:

  1. ⁠Do you offer end-to-end encryption? What security do you provide in case your server infrastructure were to be compromised?
  1. How do you check that public keys and public-key ciphertexts are authentic?
  1. How do you authenticate security-critical settings, such as the KDF type and the iteration count?
  1. Do you provide integrity guarantees for a user's vault as a whole? Can a malicious server add items to your vault?

You can also ask your favourite password manager to commission an audit checking for our attacks in their products.

  • If you still feel unsure/unsafe, then adopt an offline password manager (I highly recommend keepassXC).
[–] CardboardVictim@piefed.social 9 points 3 days ago (6 children)

I too recommend KeepassXC, works even on android with KeepassDX. I use syncthing to sync between devices (work, personal and android)

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I'm slowly moving over to my own manager, I'm still struggling to get it to all work properly on all my devices though.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 6 points 3 days ago
[–] exu@feditown.com 3 points 3 days ago

Interesting paper and I agree with the researchers to consider full server compromise in scope for online password managers. Maybe I missed it, but I'd have liked a section on the response by vendors. Mistakes happen, but the response and actions taken are very important for (continued) trust in a vendor.

[–] fireshell@fedia.io 3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Hardware TOTP Authenticator & Password Manager SecureGen

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I was always (and still am) under the assumption that you are fucked anyway, if either endpoint is compromised.

Sure, you can do a lot to make it less and less comfortable to read a password. But I’m not convinced that it is possible to. Fully prevent it from happening, no matter how hard you try.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

My password manager: a flat list and a little 3-liner gpg script. Has ctrl-f search feature built-in.

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