The main benefit is that it is obvious to the end user that their vault is unlocked. It’s the same as leaving the vault permanently unlocked, which is an option, so I can’t say it’s worse than existing options. In the simple case of no OS support, this reduces crypto security. This feature does not need to protect against an advanced threat actor, just to increase security in a convenient way. Were the second does not actually encrypt anything, but does stop every day attack vectors (e.g someone grabbed my laptop). If( laptop locked || timeout ) require yubikey The workflow/config would be something like: Unlocking the app should be reasonably easy to implement with a Yubikey.The Yubikey would not need to encrypt passwords, just unlock the app.Most users do not fill in their password after every screen lock.

It is not a replacement for the password, but an addition.Ĭoming back here to clarify something based on some thinking: Yubikey unlock adds no crypto security, but it adds operational security. Using a yubikey locally adds no real security.īen, I think you are missing the point of the user feedback. Yubikey(U2F/FIDO2) has no method to encrypt anything. Though, because of the nature of this being a very small amount of data of a per-session encrypted fixed size data plus all yubikeys associated with the account, Bitwarden could have this service independent of the vault datastore and have edge cloud servers around the world to reduce latency, especially since this would be a read heavy feature. This does potentially add a lot of latency as it requires many round-trips with Bitwarden’s servers. Local device uses local secret to decrypt master secret.If auth passes, Bitwarden sends back the encrypted master secret.Yubikey auth back to Bitwarden is started.Local device uploads the encrypted master secret to Bitwarden.Local instance generates a random secret to encrypt the master secret.It could be possible for the secret to be stored remotely, which would add security. Since using the yubikey means your secret is unencrypted, someone could go through the hassle of locating and copying the unencrypted secret. The pin can be used to encrypt the secret, the yubikey cannot. Using a pin adds infinitely more security that the yubikey does when used locally. Using a yubikey locally adds no real security.

Bitwarden usb key