In November 2022, the password manager service LastPass disclosed a breach in which hackers stole password vaults containing both encrypted and plaintext data for more than 25 million users. Since then, a steady trickle of six-figure cryptocurrency heists targeting security-conscious people throughout the tech industry has led some security experts to conclude that crooks likely have succeeded at cracking open some of the stolen LastPass vaults.

Melody Fwygon
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101Y

Since then, a steady trickle of six-figure cryptocurrency heists targeting security-conscious people throughout the tech industry

Seems they only targeted potentially accounts that might’ve contained some MONEY (Cryptocurrency)

Then on Aug. 28, Monahan said she’d concluded that the common thread among nearly every victim was that they’d previously used LastPass to store their “seed phrase,” the private key needed to unlock access to their cryptocurrency investments.

It seems that in particular “Secure Notes” containing crypto seed phrases seem to have been compromised. It’s pretty silly to have not migrated your old crypto wallets by now though.

In a December 2022 blog post, Palant explained that the crackability of the LastPass master passwords depends largely on two things: The complexity of the master password, and the default settings for LastPass users, which appear to have varied quite a bit based on when those users began patronizing the service.

…If you have/had an older account with potentially a very weak Master Password… Your password would be considered Weak if it was Less than 12 characters & did not not contain Uppercase, Lowercase and Symbols & was not an XKCD style password that *isn’t * “Correct Horse Battery Staple” or some other combination of those exact four words…

But Palant said while LastPass indeed improved its master password defaults in 2018, it did not force all existing customers who had master passwords of lesser lengths to pick new credentials that would satisfy the 12-character minimum.

…Older than 2018…

Palant noted last year that for many older LastPass users, the initial default setting for iterations was anywhere from “1” to “500.” By 2013, new LastPass customers were given 5,000 iterations by default. In February 2018, LastPass changed the default to 100,100 iterations. And very recently, it upped that again to 600,000.

…Or worse yet, 2013…and you didn’t change the iterations setting(s), which most people probably did not.

By 2013, new LastPass customers were given 5,000 iterations by default

Uh, I made my lastpass account in 2012. If the iterations setting on 2013 was 5000, then the iterations setting the older accounts are probably even worse. I may or may not upgrade the iteration, I can’t remember at all.

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Meanwhile, websites in my country don’t allow symbols for fear of code injection attacks, and the allowed max length is 8 characters. You read it right. Fucking hell, it’s Japan…

Do they allow using unicode characters though? Eight characters of kanji might a pretty strong password.

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No, no unicode on 99.9% of websites.

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