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Add some thoughts on security.
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Signed-off-by: Reimar Döffinger <[email protected]>
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rdoeffinger committed Apr 19, 2015
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Expand Up @@ -3,6 +3,31 @@ qtpass

QtPass is a gui for [pass](http://www.passwordstore.org/)

Security considerations
-----------------------
Using this program will not magically keep your passwords secure against
compromised computers even if you use it in combination with a smartcard.
It does protect future and changed passwords though against anyone with access to
your password store only but not your keys.
Used with a smartcard it also protects against anyone just monitoring/copying
all files/keystrokes on that machine and such an attacker would only gain access
to the passwords you actually use.
Once you plug in your smartcard and enter your PIN all your passwords available
to the machine can be decrypted by it, if there is malicious software targeted
specifically against it installed (or at least one that knows how to use a
smartcard).
To get better protection out of use with a smartcard even against a targeted
attack I can think of at least two options:
* The smartcard must require explicit confirmation for each decryption operation.
Or if it just provides a counter for decrypted data you could at least notice
an attack afterwards, though at quite some effort on your part.
* Use a different smartcard for each (group of) key.
* If using a YubiKey or U2F module or similar that requires a "button" press for
other authentication methods you can use one OTP/U2F enabled WebDAV account per
password (or groups of passwords) as a quite inconvenient workaround.
Unfortunately I do not know of any WebDAV service with OTP support except ownCloud
(so you would have to run your own server).

Current state
-------------
* Using pass or directly with git and gpg2
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