- cross-posted to:
- bitwarden@discuss.tchncs.de
- cross-posted to:
- bitwarden@discuss.tchncs.de
Bitwarden Authenticator is a standalone app that is available for everyone, even non-Bitwarden customers.
In its current release, Bitwarden Authenticator generates time-based one-time passwords (TOTP) for users who want to add an extra layer of 2FA security to their logins.
There is a comprehensive roadmap planned with additional functionality.
Available for iOS and Android
You must log in or register to comment.
To those that are confused about this:
Bitwarden does indeed handle TOTP directly in the password manager, but only on paid accounts and only logged in.
This is a completely offline app, separate from your existing Bitwarden account, that is entirely free.
It might serve as an alternative to e.g Aegis to some.
Is there a good reason I don’t know about to prefer this over Aegis?
No, they’re both ostensibly open source and standalone. I’m an avid Bitwarden Free user, but Aegis has been my go-to for a long time.
If it’s a standalone completely offline app, like Aegis, I’m at a loss to what they could offer that is any different than what Aegis already offers.
If you look at the roadmap they have in the blogpost, they are apparently planning tighter integration with the existing bitwarden suite
…but wouldn’t that undermine the fact that it’s standalone and offline?
The idea is that it can then work both says, like https://ente.io/auth does
Sand the fact that it’s a 2fa. A thicker integration with bitwarden would make it like a 1.5fa
I don’t see why it would if it’s optional
How so? They already have TOTP built-in to the app if you pay for premium, so this is just a free competitor to their own offering.
I’m guessing they’re trying to make it a “gateway” to getting people on Bitwarden. Start with the TOTP app, then use the password manager, then pay for premium. Or something like that.
2FA push is on the roadmap. Does aegis have that? Or am I just too dense to realise it does?
I mean, Aegis is 2FA? That’s literally all it is? It generates One Time Pad codes for various sites and apps that support authentication apps.
So, I’m not sure what you mean?
I’m not positive but I’m assuming they’re referring to a kind of MFA where the authenticating service pushes to the client you possess rather than relying on a temporal cryptographic key. I’ve got a few services which work that way
That’s indeed what I meant. Similar to how OKTA, battle.net, or the Microsoft authenticator works( in corporate environments).
You receive a push notification which asks if you’re trying to log in and approve it, followed by a fingerprint or a pin code to confirm, rather than having to type in the code generated by your app
Reading these comments, it feels like Aegis became the standard without me noticing.
Reading these comments I feel like I’m completely out of the loop because I’ve never even heard of Aegis
It doesn’t get a whole lot of attention but it’s the most mature open source authenticator app and one of the first ones you would find in fdroid. With that said, there’s nothing really standout about it or its features, it just works.
same
Just on Lemmy
interesting. what makes it special? i’m assuming it’s just like any other TOTP client?
Someone answered this for me. It’s just that it’s open source. If that matters to you, there you go.
I used to use Aegis, but after setting up my own vaultwarden, I use the normal bitwarden app/plugin on all my systems for passwords and TOTP.
The advantages are that I don’t need my phone to login, the keys are synced and backuped in the encrypted vaultwarden database, which I can then handle with normal server backup tools. It still works offline, because bitwarden app caches the password.
This is IMO much more convenient and secure (in a way that loosing access to a device doesn’t shut you out, and you don’t need to trust third parties) then most other solutions.
Even if I hosted my own BitWarden vault, I wouldn’t put my passwords and 2 factor tokens in the same place because it’s eliminating the benefits that 2 factor provides if someone somehow manages to get into my vault.
2 factor came into our life because people were using same passwords everywhere. With unique passwords, which are easy with password managers, it’s rarely needed.
That may have been part of the reason, but the theory behind MFA is that there are 3 primary ways to authenticate who you are: what you know (password), what you have (secure one time password generator or hardware token), and what you are (biometrics). Password managers and digital one time password generators have kind of blurred the lines between passwords and one time passwords, but you’re raising your risk a bit if you put them in the same place.
With unique passwords, the attack surface just changes. Instead of attacking the passwords, attackers attack the password managers. LastPass, Okta, and Passwordstate each had breaches, and the first two are quite popular.
That doesn’t mean Bitwarden is at risk (not sure if it has been targeted), it just means that attackers are finding success going after password managers, so they could go after Bitwarden. Maybe they’ll sneak in an xz-style bug that’ll allow attackers to steal credentials en-route, idk.
So it’s a matter of good/better/best:
- good - use a password manager to prevent password leaks from providing access to other accounts
- better - use 2FA to prevent “password recovery” attacks; these are often targeted in nature, so there’s a lot less risk here
- best - use a separate 2FA from your password manager to prevent a breach from exposing all of your accounts
The overhead from using a separate 2FA app is pretty low, just make sure it encrypts your keys and you trust it (FOSS is a good indicator of trust).
There is not much difference between having two apps (password manager and authenticator app) or one app, that does both on the same device.
So, if you want more security, then you have to deal with a hardware token and never with a authenticator app. But then if you loose your token, then you have trouble.
I don’t think it caches the password. Rather a decryption key is derived from your password and is used to unlock the encrypted blob.
What I meant is that is caches the password database for offline use.
For now: No.
At this moment Aegis is far superior to bitwarden auth. But it looks promising.
I really like the ability to “sideload” the icons for the codes and automatic encrypted backups to cloud storages.Not switchin’ from Aegis. No sir’ee.
I use the TOPT features and i dont have a paid account
Do you self-host? I think that’s another way to get the TOTP features w/o a paid account.
Probably but i am not
It might serve as an alternative to e.g Aegis to some.
Does it have any killer features in favor of using the free app of an for-profit company instead of an established FOSS app?
Bitwarden apps have been open source since the beginning, mobile + backend + web
I haven’t been entirely happy with Bitwarden for other reasons. You can’t self host and share with one other person without paying them $40/year. Their advertising is deceptive, because they say you can do both for free. But that one or the other, not both.
You also can’t easily share individual passkeys outside of the app. If you want to grab a passkey, you have to export your entire vault.*
It’s basically annoyance-ware.
* note that sharing passkeys is not best practice, but there are use cases.
I don’t think I realized that was a limitation because I’ve been using the Vaultwarden fork. https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
Have you heard if VaultWarden?
As others have said vaultwarden is the solution here. It is free, you can manage multiple vaults, totp is free. All the platform bit warden apps & plugins work with it. Supposedly it is leaner and easier to set up. Don’t know for sure because it is all I have used.
For shared passwords, I have a family vault where I put my streaming pws and such and everyone has access without having to share my personal vault.
Yeah, VaultWarden sounds like the answer.
with full Internet access (As shown in Aurora Store)
Thanks but I pass, I’d rather use Aegis that doesn’t need internet connection at all.
How does 2FA work without an internet connection?
it’s basically just a shared random number generator on a timer (it’s slightly smarter than that but that’s the gist), so as long as you know the start time, the current time and the starting point for the RNG, both parties can get the same result without having to ever communicate
deleted by creator
Thank goodness! I can finally get the hell away from Authy!
What’s wrong with Authy?
Not open source, and I believe an account is required.
Also doesn’t allow you to export so you can’t switch to another service
Also they have weird behind the scenes integrations into accounts even if they are just supposed to be regular 2FA. You can read stories about Twitch not playing well with other 2FA until 30 days after you remove Authy. I don’t want those kind of shadow integrations and I should be allowed to switch apps as I see fit
Uhg… Didn’t know that part. So frustrating.
And twilio, the parent company has been hacked before
I guess for me, it being closed-source and the fact that the Bitwarden password manager and now Bitwarden authenticator are open source. Truthfully, I just see how they handled the desktop version of their Authy software, giving no fucks if consumers wanted it or not, being a big red flag of what could come after. Having used Bitwarden for years now, and giving them $10 a year, makes me more biased and inclined to use their other software, since they’ve never let me down. :)
I use Aegis and it works well. FOSS and easy to use.
They discontinued the desktop client about a month ago, which is what made me stop using it.
Too many things use it, if it becomes compromised that is way too broad of an attack for me to opt into
You could have before. I moved from Authy to Aegis a few months ago
Correct me if I am wrong, but the Bitwarden client itself already does this. I store several of my TOTP’s in my self hosted Vaultwarden/Bitwarden install.
And where would you store your Bitwarden login TOTP if you used their service instead of self hosting?
And what happens if your Bitwarden account gets compromised? Now you’ve lost both factors at the same time.
No, I’ll keep my 2FA separate from my password manager, thank you very much.
Good luck getting your vault compromised.
Unless you have a weak password or the vault isn’t encrypted (which it is, AES256 iirc and you might be able to change that on a self hosted version), I don’t see that happening.
Most password manager hacks don’t attack the encryption or password themselves (my password is very long), they find/create a side channel. For example:
- keylogger attack to grab password manager password
- social engineering to reset a password
- attack the server to intercept passwords
Every secure system can be defeated, but it’s a lot less likely that two secure systems will be defeated at the same time. So I keep my passwords and second factors separate. It’s unlikely that either will be compromised, and incredibly unlikely that both will be compromised at the same time.
You’re right, it does. This is a head-scratcher.
I guess they already had the TOTP code written, so creating a standalone app was trivial, but what’s the point?
Security-wise it’s not a good idea to keep passwords and 2FA codes in the same client as it then becomes a single point of failure. A standalone authenticator app resolves that as long as it’s not unlocked with the same master password. A standalone app also opens a venue for non-BW customers to get on their platform.
