I’ve always hated the idea of using a subscription/cloud hosting for password management. I feel like I should have a LOT more control over that stuff and I don’t really want to hand all my keys over to a company.
All my secrets have been going in a highly encrypted archive with a long passphrase, but obviously that isn’t convenient on all devices. It’s been fine, I can open it on any computer but it’s not super quick. It does have the advantage of being able to put in multiple files, notes, private keys but it’s not ideal.
Anyway, finally found something that isn’t subscription, and has a similar philosophy - a highly encrypted archive file, and it’s open source and has heaps of clients including web browser plugins so it’s usable anywhere, and you can sync the vault with any file sync you like.
Thought you guys might appreciate the find, password managers have always been a bit of a catch 22 for me.
Note for android i found keepassxc the best app, and i’m using KeePassHelper browser plugin, and the KeePassXc desktop app as well as the free official one. Apps all seem to be cross platform.
Are there users that have tried both Keepass and Vaultwarden? I enjoy using Vaultwarden on my Synology but I wonder if it’s worth switching to Keepass.
I have both set up right now.
Things I like better about KeePass:
KeePass doesn’t use the cloud, you don’t have to worry about the server getting compromised or going down because there’s nothing public-facing to hack. You always know where your password database is.
KeePass lets you encrypt the database with not only the master password but also using the challenge-response from a YubiKey. That means every time you save your DB the encryption key is rotated and the DB is actually encrypted by two authentication factors.
While both can add custom fields to an entry, I like that KeePass has the option to set fields as protected so their contents are hidden like the passwords.
Things I like better about VaultWarden:
Convenience.
You can log in to your VaultWarden account on any device from the browser. KeePass requires some software to access the DB.
The VaultWarden companion software is just better. It just does autofill better. KeePassXC/DX work well but just not as well as the BitWarden software.
Other thoughts:
Syncing passwords between devices with KeePass requires 3rd party software like SyncThing. If you break/lose/etc your VaultWarden server you could lose all your passwords with it.
Always make/test backups.
Vaultwarden can do that, though its quite stiff in some aspects like folders… subfolders? nonexistant…
Folder/subfolders work just fine… when you make folder ‘a’… you can add subfolder b by typing ‘a/b’
Ah, I couldn’t find that option.
I can add custom fields to an entry but I can’t designate them as “protected”
Of course I also thought at first that you couldn’t attach files but I guess you can, they just didn’t seem to transfer over from my KeePass DB
The interface is weird and unintuitive at times…
I have a dropdown menu at the button “New custom field” and can select “Hidden”.
Oooh thank you!
Can’t believe I missed that
I’m on Bitwarden right now and have been thinking of switching to KeePass. My issue keeping me from actually switching is the convenience factor. Can’t imagine making it even more annoying to use for my SO
You can have keepass on a USB drive, an exe version that doesn’t require install, along with your db.
You sure can.
But that’s not perfect.
Often businesses will lock down their computers to prevent unauthorized software from running at all, not just installing.
And not lock down random external sites they see a user visiting every day that aren’t related to their work functions? Sounds like the SOC needs to get better at their monitoring.
Like the other commenter said, typically websites are less locked down.
It’s simpler to sandbox the browser and prevent unauthorized software from running than to block out most of the Internet and deal with complaints all day about the web restrictions
In my experience, locking down non-work sites is much less common than locking down USB devices and unknown executables. USB devices and random executables are more of a security risk as a USB drive can be used to exfiltrate data very quickly while an executable could contain ransomware, other malware, keyloggers, etc. Sites are sandboxed and limited in terms of what they can do.
I use a yubikey on bitwarden (vaultwarden) just fine…
Custom protected fields exist.
And you can always hide it in a vpn.
A big problem with keepass is if two updates to passwords try to sync simultaneously… sync- thing/ other synching software can’t merge only the updates in each file.
I also use aYubiKey in VaultWarden but the key is not used to generate the encryption keys, only the master password is, so you don’t get that added security and benefit of the encryption keys rotating every time you save the DB.
I switched from keepass to vaultwarden years ago and for my usage I wouldn’t switch back.
I needed to be able to share some passwords with other people. I think the clients are much better. I like having a website available as a backup to access a password. All in one package that works well so I don’t need separate mechanism to synchronize between different installations. I like the easy sharing secrets through links and not having to send in cleartext with emails or texts.
And for selfhosting I like that you only need the server only for syncing newly added secrets - if vaultwarden had to be online always I’d switch back.