I have long debated getting a Yubikey but have held off because I don't want to have to carry around several dongles at all times to be able to send an email.
Surely other people are in the situation of:
- iPhone, iPad
- Macbook with only USB-C ports
- Windows/Linux workstation with only USB-A ports
Is there currently a non-cumbersome solution that will work on all of these?
The way $dayjob makes this work is to issue a nano security key for each computer, and then a bluetooth security key for the iPhone (Android phones can use both NFC and Bluetooth security keys, but iPhones can only use Bluetooth security keys).
It's cumbersome, but less so than when we were plugging and unplugging our one hardware USB-A OTP token into everything (and using a desktop web browser to generate OTPs for the phones).
If you do end up getting a security key, I recommend getting at least two. If one fails, you'll want the other one as a backup so that you can get back into your accounts.
I keep an extra Yubikey in my bank box, next to my other backup keys. The only account I'd be locked out of is Twitter since they only let you add 1 token (my primary).
AWS also only allows you to add a single device, much to my annoyance. I still haven’t found a solution for that, that doesn’t involve risking getting locked out.
One answer I've seen is to create multiple users for the same person. The second user becomes the "backup" user with a different physical device and is used only to reset the primary.
At $dayjob I "solved" that problem by setting up SAML auth so we would all login via gsuite (thus using 2FA via yubikey there). After a few months I set that up we got acquired by a big company that uses RSA secureId software security tokens. The security policy mandates that you have only one active security token instance (which BTW acts as a password replacement instead of 2FA, I assume for better interop with legacy tools that only talk ldap...)
Sure, I know. Just pointing out that, at least for AWS, you do not need recovery codes or a second device for MFA. For me personally, phone+email is good enough for my threat model.
Most sites let you set up both the Yubikey and a Google auth style TOTP. I always set up both, with TOTP codes saved in KeePassXC and SFTP'd to a backup server.
If I keep one with me and one at home, then I only have to worry about leaving both at home if I’m caught in the fire. Additionally, if I can prove who I am in person, or via friends attestations or both, that’s a lot better than a forgot password form or SMS hijacking.
I tried to get mine as future-proof as possible, but I was left with a choice of either getting the Yubikey Neo with NFC or a Yubikey with USB-C.
I went with the Neo, because it supports all of my current devices, and for USB-C future testing, I tested it on my phone with an USB A-C adapter and it worked there as well. I'm a Linux/Android user without any Apple devices, though, so YMMV.
EDIT: Should also mention that I received a free basic Yubikey as a gift for subscribing to Ars Technica about a year ago. USB-to-MicroUSB and USB-to-C adapters worked on that for all of my devices, as well. I feel pretty confident switching to Yubikeys now that I have two and can keep the newish one on my keychain at all times, with the basic one in a secure place at home.
I don't think that's possible right now. Until they come up with a solution to "I've lost my 2fa token" that isn't as painful as losing you wallet there will be new designs coming out. (Actually, it's more painful. You only have a few cards in your wallet, while your 2fa token may be recognised by 100's of sites.)
This isn't a criticism of FIDO2/WebAuthn. I am impressed by how each iteration solves a new part of the problem, and FIDO2 was definitely a step forward, fixing rough edges in FIDO. But we aren't there yet. We need a FIDO3 and possibly 4, 5 and 6.
Having a backup 2FA token seems like a solution, no? As I already said, I've got a lower-end Yubikey that is basically only there to be a backup in case of emergencies.
To be honest I didn't understand your backup strategy. As far as I'm aware it isn't possible to clone a key - and I sincerely hope that's true. If you can't clone it the only other way I can think of using a backup is having every site you log into accept two so you can authenticate with either - but I've never noticed a site that can do that.
Assuming it's the "authenticate with either" solution, it ain't a great solution. If you have to replace a key you still have to visit every site you authenticate with and provide you new key. Looking at my password manager that seems to mean 100's of sites in my case.
There are lots of potential solutions to the "dog eat my token" that don't require me to visit every site I authenticate with - or even notify them. Online servers can even handle the "someone stole my token" case. Right now the only deployed online solution we have is OAuth, which really an authorisation mechanism. It sucks at for authentication.
Usually you just use multiple keys - one USB-C in the MacBook, one tiny USB-A in the laptop and the built-in Titan key in the Pixel phone. You don't remove them.
Not unless your attacker has physical access to the machine. You still have to touch the device to activate it each time.
This still mitigates the most common MITM-type attacks:
1. Attacker instigates login via fake portal.
2. Attacker fools you in to entering your 6-digit OTP.
3. Attacker intercepts your valid OTP, combines with your stolen password, logs in to real site.
This doesn’t work with a YubiKey or the equivalent because of the back-and-forward cryptographic signing. The request has to come from the website you’re logging in to, which it doesn’t in this scenario. It’s the weakness of part 2 above which we avoid here.
Well, yes, that is exactly what I'm talking about. The biggest advantage of a physical second factor is that I can see if it has been stolen: I either have it with me, or I don't.
By using multiple keys, you are effectively removing that advantage: someone could have one of your devices (e.g. your laptop while you're out for lunch) and would be able to make use of your second factor without you knowing.
Well if your primary concern is a local threat - which it absolutely is not for the vast majority of people - then you just have to be more careful with your keys. If you suspect someone might be actively trying to break in to your home, you wouldn’t leave your keys on your desk while you went to lunch.
Yep. Use FIDO2 keys to require a PIN or fingerprint to activate the key. This is why android/ios as a FIDO key is great - easy to lock, so built in two factors.
They also need to know your password though. Unless you've got your passwords written on a sticky note below your keyboard, stealing your laptop doesn't really get the attacker any further along.
That's true. But if the alternative is that people have to setup weaker fallback mechanisms (such as SMS verification) then I'm happy to pay that price.
Not really, because an attacker still needs physical access to the device. It still protects from someone with your password getting into the account (unless they have your laptop)
Which don't? For all the big major ones I've used U2F with, they've supported multiple keys for a while (or since introduction). It's practically a requirement in case you lose a key..
To name a few off the top of my head: Google, GitHub, Gitlab, Facebook, 1Password, etc.
If that's the case, it must have changed at some point. Lastpass and Duo both support multiple U2F keys, and have for at least a couple of years. I have two keys registered with Duo for login at my school and also through Lastpass's non-Duo U2F support.
This is true, and it is dangerous (once the key fails, folks get locked out). I don't use security keys with such providers.
It would be nice if someone made a library that made incorporating Webauthn login into an app as simple as using django or Ruby on Rails or React to create a login form, so folks don't end up rolling their own and assuming that a user will have at most one yubikey.
Failing that, you could do what Zeit does and rely on email providers' support for Security Keys (login by email link only).
Usually you can use a TOTP backup method (Google Authenticator or similar). But don't actually use it. Just save the key to initialize it to a secure backup which can be accessed of your Yubikey is lost.
I guess one solution is to use hardware that takes connector compatibility more seriously. I only use stuff with USB-A, and the Yubikey works with my phone via NFC (Yubico's Neo model).
Similarly, my laptop has an SD card reader and Ethernet port. My laptop and phone have 3.5mm jacks. All my small devices use micro-USB.
No dongles or adapters makes for seamless usage. I guess the only 'adapter' is keeping a micro-USB -> USB-A cable around.
Either the USB-A dongle or the USB-C one should work in all of these cases with an additional dongle (sigh).
By the way: I recommend getting the larger keys, not the nanos. These nanos look cute, but especially the newer ones are intended to be fixed to one device permanently, which in my opinion is both inconvenient and not the intended usage.
I wonder if iPad apps will start supporting Yubikeys — especially with the new iPad pros and their USB-C port it seems natural.
Ideally, I'd love to see Blink integrate ssh-agent, gpg-agent and its card support, which would let me use my existing (excellent) setup for using GPG keys stored on a Yubikey for ssh (see https://github.com/drduh/YubiKey-Guide for a great writeup of this approach).
krypton (https://krypt.co/). If you're ok with one dongle, you can get the A or C flavor of a yubikey neo and keep a converter permanently in the other devices.
so it appears, no, all reasonable solutions are quite cumbersome for the time being, for an individual who wants to use many accounts anyway. a company might be able to cook up a system that works well for its employees though.
Got a free YubiKey from Wired. Then I read that mobile is a pain, and that I really need two ... it's sat in my bag now for months, unused. I already use 2FA, and it works good enough - I'm not sold on how this will make my life better, especially on mobile.
The primary purpose of U2F/WebAuthn is to break phishing attacks. Code-based TOTP 2FA, the kind you're probably using now, is already adequate to the task of making sure you're not credential-stuffed.
>TOTP 2FA is already adequate to make sure you're not credential-stuffed.
PAKEs provide defense against both credential stuffing, (some types of) phishing/MITM, CA trust etc without UX cost (a security solution that "Just works" for users with security apathy. U2F defends against compromised user space (PAKEs would fail to protect against a key logger) and require more onerous exfiltration (either physical theft of the device or biasing the U2F keys/functions)
PAKEs are --- in this context --- simply a mechanism to authenticate with a password. They're phishable the same way an OTP token is. More importantly: they're irrelevant. No mainstream web application would be able to deploy them for the foreseeable future.
Nerds like talking about how their login secrets are protected in hardware with Yubikeys, but that's not the reason why big sites deploy U2F tokens. U2F tokens were standardized and adopted as a phishing countermeasure.
100% true. I personally wish the hardware-focused U2F bit didn't predate the WebAuthn spec. I feel, because of that, way too much focus is placed on the "hardware security" bit. I view the main benefit as replacing user selected weak passwords with a non-phishable, non-server-side loggable, non-server-side sensitive secret needed authentication standard that can be implemented entirely by code, largely without user involvement, and that doesn't rely on gross failure-prone heuristics the way password managers do today. Oh, and it is all a better user experience too. It is one of those crazy wins that you just don't get in the security space that often. I really don't care if that takes the form of a hardware security key or as a pure software implementation in the platform browsers. My guess is we will strike a middle ground...with the dominant form of authenticator being hardware based...but that hardware taking the form of the devices you already own (phone, laptop, etc).
Accurate point and why I caveat the malware/phishing point with (some types).
>U2F tokens were standardized and adopted as a phishing countermeasure.
U2F provides benefits over TOTP besides phishing
-TOTP seed generation may be compromised/bad at authentication point, may not be deleted, TOTP-seed may be shared with Eve
-Smaller exfiltration profile: When producing a U2F proof, user space isn't doing computation that could be exploited. TOTP clients generate excessive secret data for the necessary task:
User: Hey computer, I need a TOTP to log into my Vintage-Car forum.
Computer: Ok! I'll go ahead and compute the TOTP secrets to your bank, bitcoin wallet, SSH keys, and literally everything else in addition to your Vintage-Car forum account. Hopefully no one's shoulder surfing you or I don't have malware!
I think it's PAKEs are a huge win for high security-apathy users but there are trade offs:
-User space has to run more code
-All user-space platforms need to be able to run PAKE code, or else all the (non-phishable, non-server-side loggable, non-server-side sensitive..) benefits go away
-Low-entropy password choices can't be prevented server side (guess this functionality could be wrapped into the client-side code)
Autofill of a password manager is a working countermeasure against phishing too: If autofill does not work there is something wrong and you should look closer...
My experience with password managers is that they work great for me, because I understand every sharp edge and can work around them. My experience when advising family to use them is that they invariably fail them and they get frustrated. Password managers rely on pretty gross heuristics to work. They are effectively trying to automate something built for a human (choosing, remembering, and entering a password). WebAuthn gives us a real API built by and for machines. This will make the flow much less error-prone and more secure.
I tend to be a little hesitant to use the browser plugins that do autofill, I think most major vendors have had a vulnerability of some sort at some point. Doesn't mean it's unsafe, it's just the tradeoff I prefer is that I'm more likely to be phished on a single account, but less likely to have my entire DB compromised through a plugin compromise.
Except autofill fails all the time for other reasons. The site has rebranded to a new domain name. They moved the login page or redesigned it. Or it was always badly designed and broke autofill. Or the same credentials are used on multiple domains (think Google, Microsoft).
I can't find a source, but my recollection is that Google developed U2F because autofill didn't work reliably enough, so many users would just paste the password manually anyway.
It doesn't matter whether the technology "works reliably enough" it matters whether the _user_ reliably won't sidestep security by pasting their password in to the phishing site. And that's something we knew the answer to decades ago: No.
Humans are bad at giving up. If there seems to be a way forward for the original plan they will press on, regardless of all indications that this now a bad idea. In fact Google had a security override in Chrome for years that was literally typing the sequence "badidea" in recognition of this. It's not specific to computer security, it happens in incident management, there's a seminal example from years back where a train breaks down, and the incident manager sees that step 1 of the response is to send a recovery train to the location, and literally _hours_ later, with passengers stranded and desperate - that manager was still wrestling with how to get the recovery train to the location so they could proceed to step 2, rather than realising that problems with the recovery train meant they needed to _abandon the entire plan and re-assess_ because humans are not good at that.
Yes and no. Yes, if the attacker controls the DNS, he can return his own server's IP, and your browser will connect to the attacker's server showing the original name in the url bar. Fortunately TLS should save you because the attacker should not have a valid certificate (but it would save you also with OTP). If you disregard the TLS/HTTPS warning, then Webauthn breaks.
The free YubiKey from Wired is a base model. It doesn't have NFC/Bluetooth etc. But if you get the latest model from this article's promoted model (YubiKey 5) it will have all the bells and whistles for mobile/USB-C/contactless and even supports PIV SmartCard protocol, where you can upload a key pair you generated on your own outside of YubiKey.[1]
Why not use both? Most places that support 2FA support both TOTP (so Authy or Google Authenticator) and/or U2F/Webauthn. So, on mobile you can copy the authenticator codes, and on your computer you don't have to, as you can use the plugged in key.
I also got the Wired YubiKey and had the same hesitation. I ended up purchasing a newer model YubiKey with NFC; I use the new one as my primary and the older model as the backup kept at home.
> I’m going to use both. TOTP most of the time, U2F in a safe at home in case I break/lose my phone
That's backwards. TOTP is vulnerable to phishing attacks, which are the primary threat model. Far better to use U2F for daily use, and then keep a printout of the TOTP QR code in a safe at home as a backup.
$2.99 per month is too steep of a price to pay for your personal security? Really? I'd dump my Spotify/Apple Music/Netflix/whatever in a heartbeat, if I had to choose between paid subscriptions in my life
$3 per month can be a lot of money, depending on where you live and your financial situation.
Bitwarden is free as in a beer and free as in speech. Only if you want the 2FA features you need a subscription.
Then Bitwarden costs 10 USD per year. That's approx as much as 1Password asks for 3 months. Ie. Bitwarden is almost 4 times as cheap.
For that price you get a very good program with an open source frontend, and an open source backend (third party, in Ruby).
And Lastpass, after they were acquired by LogMeIn, has the balls to go from 12 USD/year to 24 USD/year. Without any additional features whatsoever a 100% price increase? That's why I went shopping. And I ended up at Bitwarden.
So this works with 1Password the website? I've been using 1Password for years, and never go to the website? How does this make my life better? Can I unlock 1Password the desktop app with the U2F key?
Our implementation of 2FA only happens when adding your account to a new device. Subsequent unlocks do not require any sort of 2FA except for certain conditions.
Our apps do not currently support U2F/WebAuthn when signing in, so they'll default back to TOTP based until we implement support for U2F. We aren't making any promises as to when this will arrive but at least two of our apps now have some form of support for it internally. It's far from complete and not ready for users but it is being worked on.
Note that U2F in this case is only about authentication, not decryption of data. This is why it's only used on initial setup of your account on a new device. The cryptography side for unlocking 1Password is entirely independent of U2F/MFA.
Hope that helps but let me know if you have any questions.
> So while it works great as your second factor in those browsers, for now you’ll still need an authenticator app set up to use with the 1Password desktop and mobile apps (and any unsupported browsers).
If this is the sort of thing where I can just tell 1password this device is OK with 2 factor, once per device, I could use this. If this the sort of thing that whenever I wanted to lookup a password, forget it. Even if I had to two it once a week or once a month I wouldn't bother. Maybe if I were paranoid about being a target I would, but I'm not.
> Last year we added two-factor authentication to provide another layer of protection for your 1Password account. When this is enabled, you are prompted to enter your second factor any time you sign in from a new device.
If you read it carefully, you'll have the answer to your question.
Switched from lastpass to gnu pass and storing my private subkeys on a couple of yubikeys has actually worked really well for me (took a few days to get my head around gpg and smartcard setup, but that was worth doing even if I didn't setup pass). That said, I am running android, windows/WSL and ubuntu; other platforms may not be so painless.
It appears via the screenshot that you can have multiple 2FA devices, which is great. I love my Yubikey in theory, but in practice I'm only using it for services where I can have a TOTP or SMS 2FA backup method, because I'm not convinced it will always work or be available. Even if having SMS 2FA enabled negates any security benefits of the Yubikey.
Thus far it's just Dropbox and Gitlab that I use it for, since they're among the few services that allow multiple 2FA methods to be used at the same time.
I believe SMS 2FA does not _completely_ negates it, in the sense that if you use your Yubikey all the time (except when you lose it) you still get for instance all the phising protection.
Of couse if someone targets you directly, then yes, you lose most of the advantages since SMS 2FA is pretty easy to break.
All the services that I have used with U2F support have supported multiple keys. Google, Gitlab, Github, and some others which I forget.
They have all worked with Yubico U2F keys and with the Google Titan keys. Pretty convenient way to have two factor authentication. I like the Yubikey 5 Nano as you can leave it plugged into a port in your laptop all the time.
> All the services that I have used with U2F support have supported multiple keys. Google, Gitlab, Github, and some others which I forget.
I've run into a number of services that only allow a single U2F key (it's been a while, so I don't remember the exact ones). Even if they do support multiple U2F keys, how do you handle enrolling both? I keep my backup key offsite, so ideally I could enroll it without physically possessing the device. If I have both in my possession at all times (or even sometimes), I'm at risk of losing both of them.
Correct, you can add several devices. You can have TOTP + U2F devices or just U2F devices or just TOTP.
It's as simple as clicking the button to add another, and walking through the steps. Just be sure to name them in such a way that you can tell them apart. I typically use the identifier on the key itself. It's usually printed somewhere opposite the USB contacts.
How do you manage keeping all the keys "synced" in terms of which services they are registered with.
I keep keys in separate locations for safety, but that makes adding all keys to a new account a big pain.
This hasn't been a big problem yet because there are so few services that support the keys, but I wonder how people would manage it if it became widespread.
This has become a pretty big problem for me. I keep the backup key offsite, and retrieve it every few months to enroll as a backup device with new services. I try to keep a list of services I need to enroll it in, but I've definitely forgotten to do so at times.
Ideally there would be a way to enroll the second device without possessing it, but I'm not sure that's technically possible.
What I'm going to do personally is only use U2F on my most secure services (email, 1Password itself, GitHub). 1Password with the TOTP stored inside of it should be good enough for the others.
For U2F there's nothing to be in sync: each key is added individually, and you don't have to add all of them at once. I.e. if you register the key on your keychain at work, you could later add the backup key in your home vault.
For storing TOTP keys on your YubiKeys, those must be the same, so you probably have to add them at the same time, or take a picture of the QR-code before you complete the registration.
> For U2F there's nothing to be in sync: each key is added individually, and you don't have to add all of them at once. I.e. if you register the key on your keychain at work, you could later add the backup key in your home vault.
The challenge is remembering to enroll using your backup device. Also, ideally your 2 devices would never be in the same room as each other, otherwise you are at risk of something like a fire destroying both.
Last I checked, Twitter supports U2F, but only allows enrolling one key.
edit: I guess the thread is referring to multiple fallbacks that aren't U2F, but even still, if you're relying solely on U2F it's good practice to have more than one key lest you lose it and get locked out.
I haven't kept a running list, but just checking a few services I use at work, and Terraform Enterprise doesn't appear to support more than one 2FA method being enabled at a time.
I'm seeing several links to different physical keys in the comments. Is there somewhere/someone that verifies these keys? Like a 3rd party testing/standards body?
I've always had it drilled into me that doing crypto yourself is fraught with peril. It seems that doing hardware would be doubly dangerous. I'd want more verification that the implementation is correct and "strong".
I think verification that the implementation is correct is easy enough, which implies that it is "strong", because these devices simply implement a spec.
What you might want to look at is things like hardware hardening or side channels. (Whether or not you consider this a matter of "correctness" can be argued, but here I would consider correct = implements correct algorithm.)
I think attacks against U2F devices are fairly difficult because you can't really use them as any kind of oracle, just due to the way the user interface works. But I am not a crypto expert, I just know how U2F works.
Note that most keys are level-1 certified, i.e. against online attacks. Physical attacks are generally not much important, because if an attacker has access to your key, he can simply use it. (unless you went through the additional hassle to set a pin, but very few people do it.)
I've had an OnlyKey for a couple of years now. It offer 12 slots per profile and 2 profiles, and the slots supporting TOTP, U2F, Yubikey, plaintext and a whole lot of other tools. With the configuration app and firmware open source, I'm really surprised I've never seen anyone else with one.
This looks awesome and I wish I could use it. Could you guys also consider bringing back the completely-offline mode that doesn't make my password manager depend on a 3rd party service? I'm prohibited by company policy from using my favorite password manager because of this.
You mean the licensed version? It never went away.
When you launch you'll be prompted to purchase. On the screens near the bottom there is a line of text about purchasing a license, go that route instead of signing up for the 1Password.com service.
Interesting. If this is the case, I think you have a communications problem. I was under the impression that after 6.0, the only way to get a license was to have your older one grandfathered. I can't find any information about this on your website. All of the options on your product info pages other than "enterprise (email us for a quote)" show monthly subscriptions only.
Where can I see product info about the licensed version? Can you provide a link?
"Disingenuous" is really how it feels to me too, unfortunately. Doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling about them being committed to supporting it. But I have to admit, the clear answer from Kyle in this very thread gives me hope. I will definitely be upgrading my 6.0 license to 8.0. AgileBits: please keep the licensed version forever, and try not to make it seem like such a step-child. :D
I agree their website is somewhat confusing, it nudges quite strongly towards purchasing a 1Password subscription. However these pages[1,2] makes quite clear that you can purchase a standalone license even if you're not upgrading:
> Or, to purchase a standalone license, click “Need a license? We have those too.” After purchasing your license, add it to 1Password.
> Or, to purchase a standalone license, click “Need a license? We have those too.”
Aha. I'd advise them to make this clear from the "new user" perspective, rather than just the "upgrade" path, because when I started this job, I set out to purchase a brand new license and was given the impression that it wasn't available anymore.
Edit: I've literally had this belief for years, and I absolutely love their product. I'm the classic case of the user that's already decided to purchase and all they need to do is take my money, but I gave up. Searching produced a forum post where there was a litany of users who were thoroughly confused about the availability of the licensed version, as well. We are clearly not alone.
I second this. I actually switched my entire household over to keypass because I was under the impression that I was forced to use the 1password cloud service.
Even if you pay for it as a subscription, you can still create standalone vaults that don't use the cloud sync. I find the cloud service useful for my personal stuff (for sharing purposes) but I keep client info in separate local vaults.
Just thought I'd mention that PayPal recently quietly added TOTP second factor support. It's not u2f but it's better than SMS. Perhaps u2f is in the cards now since they're listening to customer feedback on the issue.
For those of you who have the desktop version - it looks like U2F support is a work in progress:
"So while it works great as your second factor in those browsers, for now you’ll still need an authenticator app set up to use with the 1Password desktop and mobile apps (and any unsupported browsers)"
only tangential, but I've wanted to carry my Yubikey on my keyring, but have always been nervous about making it unreadable by sullying the contacts. Should I be concerned about this? Where do you all carry them?
That's how I've been carrying mine for the last four years and it's fine. I think you're more likely to lose it than to damage it. I have a second one that's identical (registered to the same services) that I keep in a safe place.
I came across https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2588513 in some Reddit thread about this, got it printed on my public library's 3d printer, and it's been pretty nice. (Had to etch some grooves in the sides of the Yubikey so there's something to grab it to pull it out of the sheath, but that wasn't a big deal)
Bitwarden might (not sure), but Lastpass only supports Yubikey's TOTP implementation, not U2F, and they seem to have no real motivation to support U2F based on their support ticket responses
Adding 2FA to it is great but I think the best security is likely still just to sync and use local apps for this data, to avoid being exposed to any JavaScript vulnerabilities or if 1password.com were ever hacked.
I've been using 1password for some years, but I'm not even sure what the use case for the web site is.
I have a "vault" (1password's term for an encrypted file containing passwords and related info) that's sync'd across devices through dropbox (and accessed through a locally installed app), which I think is what you're suggesting.
Anyway, I think there's no particular need to access passwords through the site.
I'd definitely feel uncomfortable typing my 1password vault password into a web page or anything else besides the apps.
Yep! 1password is great. I do use their cloud sync service with all the apps, I just don’t ever use the website or the browser extensions to limit my exposure.
Note that the browser extension actually does limit your exposure quite a bit. You make trade offs here.
For instance, if you aren't using the browser extensions, how are you getting your password to the browser to sign in? Copying and pasting? It's possible for any app on your system to read the clipboard.
Drag and drop should be a better alternative there, as we now support that in 1Password 7.
The extension though uses either Safari App Extension (for Safari, obviously) or Native Messaging Host (Firefox and Chrome browsers) and aren't susceptible to clipboard type snooping.
The browser extensions also only present items that match the website you're on. This helps a lot in phishing attempts.
So, yea, you could not use the browser extensions but you're going to have to trust that YOU always do the right thing.
Note again that 1Password does not "auto fill" like other password managers, where simply visiting the site fills the data in. You always have to explicitly ask 1Password to fill into the page.
Surely other people are in the situation of:
- iPhone, iPad
- Macbook with only USB-C ports
- Windows/Linux workstation with only USB-A ports
Is there currently a non-cumbersome solution that will work on all of these?