2012-01-16 08:51:08 +00:00
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<body>
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2012-02-04 23:36:19 +00:00
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<header>
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<h1>Master Password</h1>
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<h2>by <a href="http://www.lyndir.com">Lyndir</a></h2>
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<h3>© 2011</h3>
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</header>
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2012-01-19 16:40:39 +00:00
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<h2 id="1">— 1 —</h2>
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<p>
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<b>Find the site</b> that you need a password for by entering its name into the <i>search field</i>.
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</p>
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<p>
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<b>While searching</b>, the names of previously used sites will be listed.<br />
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Tap one of these results to go straight to its password.
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2012-01-16 08:51:08 +00:00
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</p>
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2012-01-19 16:40:39 +00:00
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<h2 id="2">— 2 —</h2>
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<p>
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<b>The site</b>'s password is now displayed.<br />
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Tap it to <i>copy the password</i>. Once copied, you can switch to another application and paste it into a password field.
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</p>
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2012-02-05 21:18:38 +00:00
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<p class="Class MPElementStoredEntity">
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<b>To change</b> the password for this site, tap the <i>edit icon</i> <img src="icon_edit.png" />.
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</p>
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<p>
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<b>Below the password</b> you can set the <i>password type</i>. Some types <i>create a password for you</i>,
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2012-01-16 08:51:08 +00:00
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others let you <i>choose your own</i>.
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</p>
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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2012-02-05 21:18:38 +00:00
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<p class="Class MPElementGeneratedEntity">
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<b>If the site complains</b> when you try to set or update the password, try changing the password type.
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2012-01-16 08:51:08 +00:00
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</p>
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2012-02-05 21:18:38 +00:00
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<p class="Class MPElementGeneratedEntity">
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<b>To create a new</b> password for this site, you can increment the <i>password counter</i> <img src="icon_plus.png" />.
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This is useful, for example, after you've had to share the password with somebody else.
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2012-01-16 08:51:08 +00:00
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</p>
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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2012-01-29 11:41:48 +00:00
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<h2 id="faq">— F.A.Q. —</h2>
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<h3>What is this thing?<br />
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How do I use it?</h3>
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<p>
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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<b>Begin by entering the name</b> of the thing you want a password for. Naming is entirely up to you, but remember to be consistent.<br />
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<i>Good names</i> could be:<br />
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<code>apple.com</code>, <code>john@doe.com</code>, <code>office safe</code>, <code>bike lock</code>, etc.
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</p>
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<p>
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Every name has a different password, so the following names may be <i>difficult to recall</i>:<br />
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<code>pw for amazon</code>, <code>pin for my cell</code>, etc.
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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</p>
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<p>
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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<b>Tap the resulting password</b> to copy it for pasting in a different application or read it to type it in or use it manually elsewhere.
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</p>
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<p>
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The thought behind this application is to secure your online (and offline) life by <b>changing all of your passwords</b>
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to passwords generated by this app.
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2012-01-29 11:41:48 +00:00
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</p>
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<h3>That's crazy talk.<br />
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Why would I do that?</h3>
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<p>
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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The theory of password authentication is simple: To log in to a site, you share a secret word with the site
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that <b>only you and the site know</b>. Since nobody else knows your secret password, nobody else can log
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into your account.
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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</p>
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<p>
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It sounds good in theory. In practice, it's an <b>absolute hell</b>. These days, people have hundreds of
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accounts on sites all over the Internet. Does that mean we're all remembering hundreds of secret passwords?
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No, of course not. That would be impossible. If you're like most people, you remember one or two
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passwords, and use those for all your sites everywhere.
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</p>
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<p>
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<q>So, what?</q>, you might say.<br />
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Here's the problem: When you share a secret password with a site, and then share the same secret password
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with another site, both sites can now use the password you gave them to log into your account on the
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<i>other</i> site. Nothing is stopping them from trying to log into <i>your</i> GMail, Hotmail or Twitter
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accounts using the same password that you used to register an account on their site. Even if you only give
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2012-03-06 14:49:33 +00:00
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your password to sites you trust, all it takes is for one of those sites to get hacked and lose their
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passwords database. Those hackers now have all it takes to impersonate you. This is, in fact, so common,
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that it's one of the main reasons people's accounts are getting hacked nowadays.
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</p>
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<p>
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Some of you already try to remember unique-ish passwords for different sites. This causes problems too:
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with so many passwords to remember, you easily forget passwords for sites you haven't used in a while. Or
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you make up a simplification algorithm such as tacking your birth year onto the site name. This is really
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not any more secure than using the same password for every site. And then there's those sites with
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<q>password policies</q>: suddenly your long password isn't good enough, because it begins with a number,
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or because (god forbid) it's <q>too long</q>. You now find yourself forced to create a strange variant
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of your password that you'll have forgotten before the day is out.
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</p>
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<p>
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This app <b>solves the problem</b> by letting you remember only a single password without requiring you to
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share the password with anyone else. Instead, the app creates secure passwords for use with whatever site
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or purpose you might need a password for.
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</p>
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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<h3>I can't change all my passwords.<br />
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Some of them were assigned to me.</h3>
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<p>
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That's why this application allows you to change the password type to <code>Personal</code> or <code>Device
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Private</code>. These types let you enter a password for a site, and the app will encrypt and save it so
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you it's there for future reference.
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</p>
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<p>
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These types of <q>stored</q> passwords don't have all the advantages that their generated counterparts have
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(they can be lost if you lose your device and don't back it up), but when you can't change a site's
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password to one generated by the app, this is as good as it gets.
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</p>
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2012-03-06 14:49:33 +00:00
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<h3>So, what if I lose my device?<br />
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I'm locked out of everything?</h3>
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<p>
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<b>Absolutely not!</b> In fact, generated passwords aren't even stored on your device. No, not in the
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cloud either. They're not stored anywhere! What that basically means is, if you grab the iPhone of a
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colleague or friend and open this app on it with your own master password, <i>it'll give you all your
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2012-03-06 14:49:33 +00:00
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generated passwords</i> (don't worry, it's perfectly safe). So, if you lose your iPhone or forget it,
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just open the app on your iPad, or borrow a friend's phone, and you're back in business. No backups or
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restores needed.
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</p>
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<p>
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This also means that, unlike all those apps that store your passwords or send them off to be stored on the
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Internet, this app makes your passwords much safer from theft. If your device is stolen, the thieves can't
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get at your passwords. There's also no cloud service that can be mis-managed or hacked.
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</p>
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<h3>Great, but that still means I need my phone to get my passwords.</h3>
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<p>
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Correct. However, remember that usually you'll only need to use this app once for each site. After you log
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into a site once using the password generated by this app, your browser will probably ask you to remember
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the password for the future. Agree to that, and you won't need to bring up your phone again the next time
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you log in to the account.
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</p>
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<p>
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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There is also a <b>Mac version</b> of Master Password available from the App Store. It allows you to
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generate any of your passwords without even needing to take out your phone.
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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</p>
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<h3>I'm paranoid.<br />
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How do I maximize my security?</h3>
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<p>
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For starters, make sure you've changed the passwords of all your sites you have accounts for to those
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generated by this app and make sure that you use this app when registering a new account somewhere, to
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determine the password to use for the account.
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</p>
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<p>
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It's also important that you've chosen a long master password. Short master passwords, especially 4-digit
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PIN codes, are trivial to guess by attackers. Using a <b>10-character master password</b> provides
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sufficient entropy to protect against any modern-day attempt at brute-forcing, assuming the password is not
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based on easily determined facts (names, birth dates, etc.). A better idea yet is to use a pass phrase,
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ideally an absurd sentence. These are usually much easier to remember and much harder to guess by attackers.
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If you're really paranoid, install a keyboard of a non-latin script (russian, chinese, ...) and create a
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master password using these characters or even a mix between scripts.<br />
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<b>Just don't forget it!</b> :-)
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</p>
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<p>
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Using the action icon on the top right, select <code>Settings</code> to find some advanced settings for
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the application. Here, you can disable <code>Remember my password</code>. Doing so will force the
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application to ask for your master password each time you open it. That way, when you show your
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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phone to somebody else after unlocking it, they can't go through your passwords.
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</p>
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<h3>I forgot my master password. What are my options?</h3>
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<p>
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Due to the nature of this app's algorithms and the decisions that were made to protect against brute-force
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attacks, it is simply infeasible to recover your master password. If you really can't remember it, your
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passwords are <b>gone</b>.
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</p>
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<p>
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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Where you go from here is, you log in with a new master password, and for each of your accounts, you go
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through the password recovery procedure (which will usually involve sending a message to your email account)
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and reset the passwords of these accounts to passwords generated by your newly chosen master password.<br />
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Just don't forget it again! :-)
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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</p>
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<h3>So how does this thing work internally?</h3>
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<p>
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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The way Master Password works internally is <i>fully disclosed</i>. The source code for this application
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is also available from <b>GitHub</i>. I invite anyone with a technical background to go through these
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resources to make certain of the trustworthyness of Master Password.
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</p>
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<p>
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This part will likely make sense to you only if you're well versed in computer security jargon. If you're
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the kind of person who likes to know how the clock ticks before deciding that it can be trusted to keep
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ticking, read on.
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</p>
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<p>
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The user chooses a single master password, preferably sufficiently long to harden against brute-force
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attacks. The application then creates a scrypt key derivative from the user's password. This process
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takes quite a bit of processing time and memory. It makes brute-forcing the master password
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<b>far more difficult</b>, to practically infeasible, even for otherwise vulnerable password strings.
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</p>
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<p>
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When the user requests a password be generated for a site, the application composes a byte buffer
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consisting of the site's name (<code>UTF-8</code> encoded), the key derived from the master password,
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and a password counter, delimited in that order by a NUL byte. The bytes are hashed using the
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<code>SHA-1</code> algorithm. The bytes resulting from this hashing operation are called the
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<code>seed</code> in the next steps.
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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</p>
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<p>
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Next, we need the password type that the user has chosen to use for the site. Password types determine the
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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<q>cipher</q> that will be used to encrypt <code>seed</code> into a readable password. For
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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instance, the standard password type <q>Long Password</q> activates one of three pre-set ciphers:
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<code>CvcvCvcvnoCvcv</code>, <code>CvcvnoCvcvCvcv</code> or <code>CvcvCvcvCvcvno</code>. Which of those
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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will be used, depends on the first of the <code>seed</code> bytes. Take the byte value modulo the amount of
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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pre-set ciphers (in this case, three), and the result tells you which of the three ciphers to use.
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2012-01-29 11:41:48 +00:00
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</p>
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<p>
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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Now that we know what cipher to use for building our final password, all that's left is to iterate the
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cipher, and produce a character of password output for each step. When you iterate the cipher, every
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character in the cipher represents a set of possible output characters. For instance, a <code>C</code>
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character in the cipher indicates that we need to choose a capital consonant character. An <code>o</code>
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character in the cipher indicates that we need to choose an <q>other</q> (symbol) character. Exactly which
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2012-05-20 17:17:22 +00:00
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character to choose in that set for the password output depends on the next byte from <code>seed</code> bytes.
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Like before, take the next unused <code>seed</code> byte's byte value modulo the amount of characters in the
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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set of possible output characters for the cipher iteration and use the result to choose the output
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character. Repeat until you've iterated the whole cipher.
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2012-01-29 11:41:48 +00:00
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</p>
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<p>
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2012-01-30 00:02:45 +00:00
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The result is a password whose format is dictated by the password type's ciphers and whose exact value is
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filled in by feeding the algorithm some bytes from a hash operation on the user's givens.
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2012-01-29 11:41:48 +00:00
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</p>
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<h3>This stuff is gold.<br />
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I want one branded for our company.</h3>
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<p>
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Contact me directly for enterprise inquiries. I can provide branded clients and enterprise distribution
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if your company is interested in deploying this solution internally.
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</p>
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<footer>
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<a href="http://masterpassword.lyndir.com">Homepage</a> | <a href="http://www.lyndir.com">Lyndir</a> |
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<a href="http://www.lyndir.com/contact">Contact</a>
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</footer>
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2012-01-16 08:51:08 +00:00
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</body>
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</html>
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