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Am I correct assuming that the #Bitwarden server-side iterations provide no security value? Judging by their security whitepaper, they are misimplemented in the same way as for #LastPass.

See bitwarden.com/images/resources, page 9. The server-side iterations are applied to the master password hash before it is stored. They are not applied to the encryption key however, this one is derived from the master password with the 100,000 PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 iterations performed on the client side.

If someone were to get a copy of the Bitwarden data, they will need to bruteforce the master password. In order to test their guesses, they don’t need to check the master password hash – they can rather test whether they can decrypt the data. And here they are only slowed down by the 100,000 client-side iterations.

This does *not* have to be like this. See for example the Firefox Sync protocol: blog.mozilla.org/warner/2014/0 (“new” design from 2014). Here the scrypt hashing performed on the server side is a necessary step both to validate the password and to derive the encryption key.

Mind you, Bitwarden is still better than LastPass assuming that they encrypt all the data and have consistent PBKDF2 iteration settings for all accounts. But they are not *that* much better, and 100,000 iterations is still factor 3 below current recommendations.

I'm a fan. This may be a misinterpretation or outdated but wanted awareness.
@bitwarden

Bitwarden

@jpaul New account defaults will be set to 350,000, the team will also be sharing some messaging around this to educate community members.

** edit, 600,000 will be the new default.

@bitwarden You should raise it to 1,000,000 and get some marketing juice and street cred out of it. 😊

@opengovernment @bitwarden Just had a look at that link, would it make sense to switch to the 512 bit version as it requires a lot less rounds?

@bitwarden This is not good enough. This is one the main reasons I left Lastpass. Code your software to at least prompt users to update, and I would go so far as to suggest you should force them to.

Letting accounts stay on outdated levels is just not the way.

@LordPhantom Thanks for the feedback, the team is working on this one.

@bitwarden lmao when you randomly notice that your account is using 5000 iterations and google to investigate what the heck is going on, and find this