this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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Privacy
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I struggle to think of a situation where I would willingly undermine TOTP security by storing the secrets in my web browser.
Before using this for anything you can't afford to lose, I suggest thinking twice. And then twice again.
Edit to elaborate:
Web browsers are probably the single most targeted component in a desktop computer, have an enormous attack surface, and suffer from an unending stream of vulnerabilities and exploits discovered practically every month. Storing your 2FA secrets there is akin to putting a second lock on your door and hiding the key under the doormat.
And no, encrypting the secrets in the browser for storage-at-rest does not solve this problem, because it also delegates decryption to the browser. That means an exploited browser can access all of your secrets as soon as you request a TOTP from any of them. Closing it won't help, because an exploited browser can trivially save or give away a copy of the password you entered, or the decryption key that was generated from it, or the secrets themselves, so your secrets are then compromised forever.
2FA generators are generally built as stand-alone programs for good reason. Even the ones that offer a browser extension don't let it access the secret storage.
Really, think twice before depending on this design for anything important.
It's also an extension with 1 review, by a no-name developer, with only 12 installs... definitely would trust that...
Well this is 600 lines of code, if you cannot audit that you can indeed ignore it for now. Once again this is the only auditable code out there and not asking for unrelated permissions.
With all due respect, it doesnt matter what the code is right now. This is an extension that you can update at any point in the future to replace with something malicious.
Trust is near impossible to build in todays internet.
https://www.kaspersky.com.au/blog/dangerous-chrome-extensions-87-million/32170/
This is were the manifest/permission is important. I cannot emphasize enough that I had to code this myself because, at the time, nothing else would be OK with me. This was because of 1- way too big of a code base, 2- way too many permissions.
It is indeed a problem that extensions are not as well maintained as Linux distribution packages but in this specific instance the extension has no right to read any information nor send requests to any server.
I appreciate you have put effort into this, and you have gone out of your way to make it safer, but if the extension were to become malicious at a later date, expanding permissions (and relying on users brainlessly-clicking accept) or using an exploit or sidechannel would undo any of that.
The downside of browser extensions is that they are operating within a massive codebase, and thus have a huge attack surface if they decide to become malicious.
For what its worth, I commend your efforts here, its just near impossible to trust any peice of software not backed by the reputation of an established company/developer.