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[IMPROVED]  Use SHA-1 instead of MD-4 for hashing the user givens.
[UPDATED]   Remember master password on by default.
[IMPROVED]  More and improved FAQ.
[ADDED]     Auto-generate build/version values in Info.plist and
            Settings Root.plist.
This commit is contained in:
Maarten Billemont
2012-01-30 01:02:45 +01:00
parent 7b14556dbe
commit b10c00786e
9 changed files with 160 additions and 134 deletions
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OnePassword/Resources/help.html
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<h3>What is this thing?<br />
How do I use it?</h3>
<p>
The idea of this application is that you <b>change all of your passwords</b> everywhere to a password
generated by this app.
You use it by searching for the name of your site (you choose this yourself. For Twitter, you could use
<code>twitter</code>, <code>twitter.com</code>, or something else entirely as the name. Just remember how
you name your sites and try to be consistent). Tap the resulting password to copy it for pasting elsewhere
or type it manually on your computer.
</p>
<p>
The thought behind this application is to secure your online life by <b>changing all of your passwords</b>
to passwords generated by this app.
</p>
<h3>That's crazy talk.<br />
Why would I do that?</h3>
<p>
Everybody everywhere uses passwords for authentication nowadays. The theory of password authentication is
simple: It's a secret word that <b>only you</b> and the other party know. So, because nobody else knows
your secret password, nobody else can log into your <abbr>E-Mail</abbr> or Twitter account with it.
The theory of password authentication is simple: To log in to a site, you share a secret word with the site
that <b>only you and the site know</b>. Because nobody else knows your secret password, nobody else can log
into your site.
</p>
<p>
That's fine and dandy in theory. In practice, it's an <b>absolute hell</b>. In modern times, people have
hundreds of accounts on sites all over the Internet. So does that mean we're all remembering hundreds of
secret passwords? No, of course not. That would be <i>impossible</i>. If you're like most people, you
remember one or two passwords, and use those for all your sites everywhere.
It sounds good in theory. In practice, it's an <b>absolute hell</b>. These days, people have hundreds of
accounts on sites all over the Internet. Does that mean we're all remembering hundreds of secret passwords?
No, of course not. That would be impossible. If you're like most people, you remember one or two
passwords, and use those for all your sites everywhere.
</p>
<p>
<q>So what</q>, you say? Here's the problem: You're not the only one that knows your secret password. Each
time your make an account with a site and tell them your secret password, <i>they know it too</i>! Nothing
is stopping them from trying to log into GMail, Hotmail or Twitter with the same password and username you
used to register with their own site. Even if you only give your password to sites you trust, all it takes
is for one of those sites to get hacked and loose their password database. Those hackers now have all it
takes to impersonate you. This is, in fact, so common, that it's one of the main reasons people's accounts
are getting hacked or compromised nowadays.
<q>So, what?</q>, you might say.<br />
Here's the problem: When you share a secret password with a site, and then share the same secret password
with another site, both sites can now use the password you gave them to log into your account on the
<i>other</i> site. Nothing is stopping them from trying to log into <i>your</i> GMail, Hotmail or Twitter
accounts using the same password that you used to register an account on their site. Even if you only give
your password to sites you trust, all it takes is for one of those sites to get hacked and loose their
passwords database. Those hackers now have all it takes to impersonate you. This is, in fact, so common,
that it's one of the main reasons people's accounts are getting hacked nowadays.
</p>
<p>
Some of you already try to remember unique-ish passwords for different sites. This causes problems too:
with so many passwords to remember, you easily forget passwords for sites you haven't used in a while. Or
you make up a simplification algorithm such as tacking your birth year onto the site name. This is really
not any more secure than using the same password for every site. And then there's those sites with
<q>password policies</q>: suddenly your long password isn't good enough, because it begins with a number,
or because (god forbid) it's <q>too long</q>. You now find yourself forced to create a strange variant
of your password that you'll have forgotten before the day is out.
</p>
<p>
This app <b>solves the problem</b> by letting you remember only a single password without requiring you to
share the password with anyone else. Instead, the app creates secure passwords for use with whatever site
or purpose you might need a password for.
</p>
<h3>I can't change all my passwords.<br />
Some of them were assigned to me.</h3>
<p>
That's why this application allows you to change the password type to <code>Personal</code> or <code>Device
Private</code>. These types let you enter a password for a site, and the app will encrypt and save it so
you it's there for future reference.
</p>
<p>
These types of <q>stored</q> passwords don't have all the advantages that their generated counterparts have
(they can be lost if you loose your device and don't back it up), but when you can't change a site's
password to one generated by the app, this is as good as it gets.
</p>
<h3>Uh, so what if I loose my device?<br />
<h3>So, what if I loose my device?<br />
I'm locked out of everything?</h3>
<p>
<b>Absolutely not!</b> In fact, generated passwords aren't even stored on your device. No, not in the
cloud either. They're not stored anywhere! What that basically means is, if you grab the iPhone of the
person sitting next to you and open this app on it with your own master password, <i>it'll give you all
your generated passwords</i>. So, if you loose your phone or forget it, just borrow a friend's phone or
get a new one, and you're back in business. No backups or restores needed.
cloud either. They're not stored anywhere! What that basically means is, if you grab the iPhone of a
colleague or friend and open this app on it with your own master password, <i>it'll give you all your
generated passwords</i> (don't worry, it's perfectly safe). So, if you loose your iPhone or forget it,
just open the app on your iPad, or borrow a friend's phone, and you're back in business. No backups or
restores needed.
</p>
<p>
That also means that, unlike all those apps that store your passwords or send them off to be stored
on the internet, your passwords are much safer. Nobody knows about them. If your device is stolen,
the thieves can't get at them.
This also means that, unlike all those apps that store your passwords or send them off to be stored on the
Internet, this app makes your passwords much safer from theft. If your device is stolen, the thieves can't
get at your passwords. There's also no cloud service that can be mis-managed or hacked.
</p>
<h3>I entered my master password on my friend's app. It just says <q>Invalid master password</q> and exits!</h3>
<h3>Great, but that still means I need my phone to get my passwords.</h3>
<p>
For your own protection and to avoid opening the app after <i>mistyping</i> your master password (and thus
generating bad passwords for your sites), the app normally checks whether you're entering the same master
password as the one you've been using before.
Correct. However, remember that usually you'll only need to use this app once for each site. After you log
into a site once using the password generated by this app, your browser will probably ask you to remember
the password for the future. Agree to that, and you won't need to bring up your phone again the next time
you log in to the account.
</p>
<p>
To open the app with <b>a different master password</b>, just go into your device's <code>Settings</code>, find
<code>Master Password</code>'s settings somewhere near the bottom, and flip the setting: <code>Change my
password</code>. The next time you open the app, you can enter a new master password. Don't worry:
you're not wiping your friend's passwords this way. All he needs to do to get back at his own passwords is
flip the switch again and change back to his own master password.
A <b>Mac version</b> of this app is also in the works so that you can easily get to all of your passwords
without needing to bring up your phone. More technically savvy users can already download a <b>Bash
script</b> from the homepage that can generate these passwords for you on any POSIX system (such as your
Mac).
</p>
<h3>Great, but that still means I need my phone to access anything.</h3>
<h3>I'm paranoid.<br />
How do I maximize my security?</h3>
<p>
Correct. However, remember that usually you'll only need to use this app once for each site. Imagine
you're usually on your MacBook Air. You go to Twitter, it asks for your password. You get your phone out,
start the app and generate the password for <code>twitter.com</code>. You copy the password manually by
typing it out on your MacBook Air. You may notice that the generated passwords have been created such that
they're fairly easy to copy. Once you log in, though, your MacBook will ask you to save the password in its
key chain. Agree to that, and you won't need to bring up your phone again the next time you log in to
Twitter.
For starters, make sure you've changed the passwords of all your sites you have accounts for to those
generated by this app and make sure that you use this app when registering a new account somewhere, to
determine the password to use for the account.
</p>
<p>
If you're still worried, the app's homepage details <b>the algorithm</b> used to generate your passwords.
There's also <b>a Bash script</b> that you can use to generate your passwords on any POSIX system (such as,
your Mac). A Mac version of this app is also in the works so that you can easily get to all your passwords
without needing to bring up your phone.
It's also important that you've chosen a long master password. Short master passwords, especially 4-digit
PIN codes, are easily brute-forced by attackers. Using a <b>12-character master password</b> provides
sufficient entropy to protect against any modern-day attempt at brute-forcing, assuming the password is not
based on easily determined facts (names, birth dates, etc.). If you're really paranoid, install a keyboard
of a non-latin script (russian, chinese, ...) and create a master password using these characters or even a
mix between scripts. Just don't forget it! :-)
</p>
<p>
If you go into <code>Settings</code>, on the bottom you'll find an entry for this application; tap it to
find some advanced settings for the app. Here, you can disable <code>Remember my password</code>. Doing
so will force the app to ask for your master password each time you open it. That way, when you show your
phone to somebody else after unlocking it, they can't go through your passwords.
</p>
<h3>I forgot my master password. What are my options?</h3>
<p>
Due to the nature of this app's algorithms and the decisions that were made to protect against brute-force
attacks, it is simply infeasible to recover your master password. If you really can't remember it, your
passwords are <b>gone</b>.
</p>
<p>
Where you go from here is, you change your master password (In <code>Settings</code>, flip <code>Change my
password</code> and start the app again), and for each of your accounts, you go through the password
recovery procedure (which will usually involve sending a message to your E-Mail account) and reset the
passwords of these accounts to passwords generated by your newly chosen master password. Just don't forget
it again! :-)
</p>
<h3>So how does this thing work internally?</h3>
<p>
Alright, let's describe the process in detail. This part will likely make sense to you only if you're
well versed in computer security jargon. If you're the kind of person who likes to know how the clock
ticks before deciding that it can be trusted to keep ticking, read on.
</p>
<p>
The user chooses a single master password, preferably sufficiently long to harden against brute-force
attacks. When the user requests a password be generated for a site, the application composes a string
consisting of the site name, the master password, and a password counter, delimited in that order by a dash
character, and hashes those <code>UTF-8</code> bytes using the <code>SHA-1</code> algorithm. The bytes
resulting from this hashing operation are called the <code>keyBytes</code> in the next steps.
</p>
<p>
Next, we need the password type that the user has chosen to use for the site. Password types determine the
<q>cipher</q> that will be used to encrypt <code>keyBytes</code> into a readable password. For
instance, the standard password type <q>Long Password</q> activates one of three pre-set ciphers:
<code>CvcvCvcvnoCvcv</code>, <code>CvcvnoCvcvCvcv</code> or <code>CvcvCvcvCvcvno</code>. Which of those
will be used, depends on the first of the <code>keyBytes</code>. Take the byte value modulo the amount of
pre-set ciphers (in this case, three), and the result tells you which of the three ciphers to use.
</p>
<p>
Now that we know what cipher to use for building our final password, all that's left is to iterate the
cipher, and produce a character of password output for each step. When you iterate the cipher, every
character in the cipher represents a set of possible output characters. For instance, a <code>C</code>
character in the cipher indicates that we need to choose a capital consonant character. An <code>o</code>
character in the cipher indicates that we need to choose an <q>other</q> (symbol) character. Exactly which
character to choose in that set for the password output depends on the next byte from <code>keyBytes</code>.
Like before, take the next unused <code>keyByte</code>'s byte value modulo the amount of characters in the
set of possible output characters for the cipher iteration and use the result to choose the output
character. Repeat until you've iterated the whole cipher.
</p>
<p>
The result is a password whose format is dictated by the password type's ciphers and whose exact value is
filled in by feeding the algorithm some bytes from a hash operation on the user's givens.
</p>
<h3>This stuff is gold.<br />