• Over the past 15 years, password managers have grown from a niche security tool used by the technology savvy into an indispensable security tool for the masses, with anestimated94 million US adults-or roughly 36 percent of them-having adopted them. • They store not only passwords for pension, financial, and email accounts, but also cryptocurrency credentials, payment card numbers, and other sensitive data. • All eight of the top password managers have adopted the term “zero knowledge” to describe the complex encryption system they use to protect the data vaults that users store on their servers. • The definitions vary slightly from vendor to vendor, but they generally boil down to one bold assurance: that there is no way for malicious insiders or hackers who manage to compromise the cloud infrastructure to steal vaults or data stored in them. • These promises make sense, givenpreviousbreachesof LastPass and the reasonable expectation that state-level hackers have both the motive and capability to obtain password vaults belonging to high-value targets. • A bold assurance debunked Typical of these claims are those made by Bitwarden, Dashlane, and LastPass, which together are used by roughly 60 million people.
Article Summaries:
- Over the past 15 years, password managers have grown from a niche security tool used by the technology savvy into an indispensable security tool for the masses, with an estimated 94 million US adults-or roughly 36 percent of them-having adopted them. They store not only passwords for pension, financial, and email accounts, but also cryptocurrency credentials, payment card numbers, and other sensitive data. All eight of the top password managers have adopted the term “zero knowledge” to describe the complex encryption system they use to protect the data vaults that users store on their servers.
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