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MSC4114: Matrix as a password manager #4114

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@Johennes Johennes commented Feb 24, 2024

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In line with matrix-org/matrix-spec#1700, the following disclosure applies:

I am a Systems Architect at gematik, Software Engineer at Unomed, Matrix community member and former Element employee. This proposal was written and published with my community member hat on.

@Johennes Johennes force-pushed the feature/matrix-as-a-password-manager branch from 02fe189 to 9ab6411 Compare February 24, 2024 20:51
@Johennes Johennes changed the title MSCXXXX: Matrix as a password manager MSC4114: Matrix as a password manager Feb 24, 2024
@Johennes Johennes marked this pull request as ready for review February 24, 2024 20:53
@turt2live turt2live added proposal A matrix spec change proposal client-server Client-Server API kind:feature MSC for not-core and not-maintenance stuff needs-implementation This MSC does not have a qualifying implementation for the SCT to review. The MSC cannot enter FCP. labels Feb 24, 2024
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I see some very major flaws with this around the security of the secrets. This feels like a excel spreadsheet with metadata added :/ Thats against any modern security recommendation.

proposals/4114-matrix-as-a-password-manager.md Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved
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sorting data in the UI but are not required to do so.

`m.secret` events are not meant to be used in rooms other than those of type
`m.vault.secret` and should always be encrypted.
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Maybe I'm just scarred from the last 7 or so years that we had regular UTDs, but I'm still scared to lose my passwords this way, even with SSSS. MSC4114-based password managers should really offer an offline encrypted backup feature, but I'm not certain the spec may see it in it's area of responsibility.

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Yeah, agreed. This sounds like a great point to add to the "Potential issues" section.

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I like this proposition for the concept of sharing for passwords this might enable, which seems much nicer than what my experience has been with bitwarden and keepass2. However it is ironic that matrix with it's required secondary password which will even be needed to access the encrypted passwords here, basically requires another password manager. It's a bit of a hen-and-egg problem.

sorting data in the UI but are not required to do so.

`m.secret` events are not meant to be used in rooms other than those of type
`m.vault.secret` and should always be encrypted.
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@HarHarLinks HarHarLinks Mar 6, 2024

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This will basically require clients to implement key sharing with other users on invite so you can invite them after having created a secret. I'm not sure this is a hard requirement in the Matrix Spec currently, but something to point out to clients for this use case.

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