LastPass Blog

From the Last Pass blog about a recent incident:

Cloud-based backup storage – contained configuration data, API secrets, third-party integration secrets, customer metadata, and backups of all customer vault data. All sensitive customer vault data, other than URLs, file paths to installed LastPass Windows or macOS software, and certain use cases involving email addresses, were encrypted using our Zero knowledge model and can only be decrypted with a unique encryption key derived from each user’s master password. As a reminder, end user master passwords are never known to LastPass and are not stored or maintained by LastPass – therefore, they were not included in the exfiltrated data.

https://blog.lastpass.com/2023/03/security-incident-update-recommended-actions/

In other words, the thieves went to the bank vault a d stole your safety deposit box but can't access it because they need your key, which only you posses.

If I can store my passkeys in 1password (or lastpass etc) then nobody needs access to my physical phone. They just need access to my password manager's password.

I agree that for many many people password managers are way better than alternatives. But they don't magically make everything safe.

It's like MFA. "it is all safe now because we will send you a code via SMS" and the people fall for social engineering attacks that make them disclose the code the attacker just had the bank send to them.

I doubt such people will be a le to safely use a password…

The poster states:

>"If you had a legacy 5000 rounds or 10000 rounds, the # of rounds can't just be increased server side. Changing that would mean a new key is derived. So older users likely still have a pretty low number of pbkdf2 rounds which makes them more vulnerable to brute forcing"

Can someone say about how long would it take for an attacker to brute force a pbkdf2 master key with 5000 or 10000 rounds?

Looking at their blog post from a few days ago they state:

>"The threat actor may attempt to use brute force to guess your master password and decrypt the copies of vault data they took. Because of the hashing and encryption methods we use to protect our customers, it would be extremely difficult to attempt to brute force guess master passwords for those customers who follow our password best practices. We routinely test the latest password cracking technologies against our algorithms to keep pace with and improve upon our cryptographic controls."[1]

Can someone say did they notify customers who had legacy accounts that used 5000 or 10000 iteration pbkdf2 master keys?
They sure don't seem to mention anything remotely like that in their incident report.[1]

In the above paragraph "best practices" is a link to the URL that fails to mention anything about selecting or periodically increasing the number of pbkdf2 iterations.[2]. If this weren't bad enough you are interrupted from reading their important incident report by a pop up asking you to sign up for their…

> The MFA reset shouldn't be related to the increase in hash rounds, those are unrelated. So they must suspect the MFA seeds were also stolen, but aren't saying it, right?

They were stolen but weren't very clear about it.

From their summary of their latest security incident[1] it says attackers stole:

> Backup of LastPass MFA/Federation Database – contained copies of LastPass Authenticator seeds, telephone numbers used for the MFA backup option (if enabled), as well as a split knowledge component (the K2 “key”) used for LastPass federation (if enabled). This database was encrypted, but the separately-stored decryption key was included in the secrets stolen by the threat actor during the second incident.

This summary links to a page[2] with more information, but actually on this page they give less information, saying only:

> [Customer Secrets accessed includes] Multifactor Authentication (MFA) seeds - MFA seeds assigned to the user when they first registered their multifactor authenticator of choice to authenticate to the LastPass vault.

1: https://blog.lastpass.com/2023/03/security-incident-update-recommended-actions/

2: https://support.lastpass.com/help/what-data-was-accessed

> the hugely negative perception of virus-laden wildlands on Android

I... don't see this in real life? There have always been San Bernadino-emboldened Apple customers that love to dunk on Android security, but recently that's gone away. Trojan horses are making it through[0] Apple's manual review, NSO Group has working exploits more often than not, the US government has wiretapped Push Notifications[1] and Apple has seemingly slowed their persecution of organized hacking groups.

iOS is in a post-Pegasus world. Android was perceived to be vulnerable if you downloaded the wrong app; iOS was proven to be vulnerable if you received an SMS payload from any user. And Apple has admitted that they cannot even really detect it[2] anymore. Neither educated users nor common people are associating Apple with security, especially now.

[0] https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-impersonating-lastpass-currently-available-in-apple-app-store

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/

[2] https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/20/apple-currently-only-able-to-detect-pegasus-spyware-in-half-of-infected-iphones/

I stopped using Lastpass in 2017 after the second breach that year that allowed remote code execution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LastPass#2017_security_incidents

It wasn't so much that that happened, but rather their response:

https://blog.lastpass.com/2017/03/important-security-updates-for-our-users/

- "Our investigation to date has not indicated that any sensitive user data was lost or compromised"

- "No master password change is required"

- "No site credential passwords need to be changed"

Given the fact that an attacker could run code in a user's browser extension without any communication with Lastpass servers, there was no way for them to know whether the master or site passwords had been stolen. The only responsible thing for them to do at that point in my view was to recommend everyone change all their passwords. Instead they completely played it down.

So they completely lost my trust and I spend the next several days moving off Lastpass and changing the passwords for hundreds of websites...I feel for all of you finding yourselves in that situation now. :-(

I honestly can't do it justice. See what Steve has to say.
http://blog.lastpass.com/2010/07/lastpass-gets-green-light-f....

Also consider linking to a yubikey.
https://helpdesk.lastpass.com/security-options/multifactor-authentication-options/yubikey-authentication/

EDIT: DO NOT FOR ANY REASON DO THIS
>for this reason I recommend writing your passwords down on a piece of paper you keep in your wallet or purse.

I cannot respond directly to Munin but anyone who suggest that is going to lead you to this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10276460/David-Miranda-was-carrying-password-for-secret-files-on-piece-of-paper.html

Someone could get a hold of your wallet and take a pic of your passwords then put them back and you'd never know you'd been compromised. And Lastpass uses the trust no one mentality so you don't have to trust them. They never see your password it's encrypted using your password and yubikey if you have one.