Bitwarden_rs: Unofficial Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust

https://github.com/dani-garcia/bitwarden_rs

by xearl • 5 years ago

232 139 5 years ago

malsanton• 5 years ago

I love this project, but something has always bothered me about it. For something as critical as your entire set of passwords, aren’t you essentially trusting this person you’ve never met to not just take all of them when you use the server?

For example, one day a malicious maintainer could flip a switch that simply updates the docker image to send thousands of peoples’ entire vault somewhere and then disappear, no?

killingtime74• 5 years ago

Especially since bitwarden itself is already open source. This is a great learning project probably but not great for use

joaopms• 5 years ago

The greatest thing about this implementation is its simplicity. I actually deployed this server for my personal use because everything lives in one Docker image and not a lot of them like the official implementation. I do understand that the official implementation helps with scalability and more, I just don't need it.

Nullabillity• 5 years ago

The official Bitwarden server depends on MSSQL.

BiteCode_dev• 5 years ago

Same with basically any part of your infra.

What prevents Postgres mainteners to just still all your DB ? Nginx mainteners to redirect your web traffic ?

Ultimately, it boils down to a balance between trust in the author, the community or your own checking process.

novium• 5 years ago

If I'm not mistaken it should be mostly fine as long as you trust the desktop/phone versions of Bitwarden not to send off the (unhashed) key to the server

Edit: Noting that there have been discussions about the default number of iterations. https://github.com/bitwarden/jslib/issues/52

danmur• 5 years ago

The main problem I can see is entering your login in the web interface. I still use it though.

sneak10• 5 years ago

Note also that the bitwarden desktop app has a remote code execution vulnerability that the developers refuse to fix, which means that the developers can, at any time, replace your local copy of the bitwarden desktop app with a different version that could steal all your passwords in exactly the manner you describe.

You can patch the bitwarden client (and also take the opportunity to remove the spyware they have embedded in it, as well), or use a program like LuLu or Little Snitch to block it from communicating with anything but your own selfhosted bitwarden_rs instance.

hanniabu• 5 years ago

Even if the takeaway from that conversation was that sha256 is good enough, it concerns me how the Bitwarden team handled that issue.

Macha3• 5 years ago

Isn't this true for any service? We're just trusting that the bitwarden/server image or bitwarden.com won't do the same?

Also this is only a risk if you use the provided Web vault. If you use the desktop, mobile or browser extension clients, it would require both Bitwarden LLC and dani garcia to conspire against you as the server doesn't control code those clients run and the API only provides it data in encrypted format.

Finally, if you're that worried you can pin the container version by hash and only update when you are confident in the new version

jamescontrol• 5 years ago

Yes, but if a company does this, they are essentially killing themselves. They have presumably spent a lot of time creating a company, gain customers etc, whereas a single(?) maybe anonymous open source developer does not have that much to lose.

ianpurton• 5 years ago

You can avoid this by only storing part of your password in Bitwarden. The random part.

Then when you log into somewhere add another secret (which you keep in your head) to the end of the password you stored in Bitwarden.

Switch on 2FA everywhere you can.

Sleep at night.

CivBase• 5 years ago

That's actually a cool idea for a password manager in general. After logging in, you input a "salt" value that is appended to the end of all your passwords. That value is never sent to the password server, so even if the server is compromised your associated accounts aren't.

mnutt2• 5 years ago

This is the use case that something like sandstorm.io tries to solve, by locking down system calls on the backend and (slowly but surely) CSP on the frontend. I don’t think BitWarden has been ported yet, though.

foepys• 5 years ago

Is sandstorm active again? A few years ago there was some news about the company behind it running out of money and abandoning the project if I remember correctly.

Majromax2• 5 years ago

With any password manager, encryption happens client-side. A malicious or compromised host could make off with your encrypted vault, but that would not by itself compromise passwords.

colejohnson66• 5 years ago

OP is arguing that the software could be changed to upload your encrypted version as usual, but also silently upload your unencrypted version. Either unintentionally (bug) or intentionally (tin foil hat saying NSA)

chillfox• 5 years ago

You could always write your own password manager if you are that paranoid.

rbut2• 5 years ago

The same could be said of every docker image on dockerhub, or any open source project on github, or any distro of linux.. I could keep going.

Unless you review the source code of everything you use, and compile it yourself, there’s always that risk.

throwaway8581• 5 years ago

Because of the way bitwarden works, I think as long as the client is secure, compromise of the server is not a major concern except for data loss. Your vault is encrypted client-side.

The real threat is that someone takes control of the bitwarden browser extension and pushes a malicious update.

vbezhenar• 5 years ago

The real threat is that someone takes control of the bitwarden browser extension and pushes a malicious update.

That's why I don't use any KeePass extensions. I just don't trust browser enough to be able to get any of my passwords.

I'm thinking about writing my own extension which will communicate with KeePass in a way that suits me (basically: when I'm pressing button in browser, it'll popup KeePass window with search field filled with server domain. Then I can either auto-type password from KeePass or copy it to clipboard, either way I'm only using KeePass and browser extension have no way to get any information.

jillesvangurp2• 5 years ago

You are in control here. It's like every other bit of software you run yourself: it's your problem to do it properly.

1) if you worry about people replacing the docker image you are using, build your own. It's not hard. Alternatively, use a specific version of the docker image by specifying the version or the hash (if you are really paranoid). Of course after you review the Dockerfile. Minimum at least glance through the Dockerfile.

2) bitwarden has import/export functionality (client side) so if your server disappears for whatever reason, you can still export your passwords from the client side.

3) if you don't trust the OSS code, audit it or at least look through it. That's the whole point of OSS. Build it from source if you must. File bugs. Look at the issue tracker. You can choose not to but if something happens it's your problem; not somebody else's problem.

4) The vault is encrypted and the server never handles or sees the decrypted content (see 3 to verify this). Other people's ability to break that encryption depends on you using a secure master password.

5) Or just pay Bitwarden to host passwords for you and rely on their terms of use, SLAs, support, good reputation, and what not. That's probably the best option if you want ass coverage for professional usage. Their pricing is very reasonable for small setups. And probably sharing passwords with a large group of users is just a spectacularly bad idea to begin with. A couple of key users, should cost you max 20/month. Not really worth dedicating devops time for self hosting unless you have a really good reason to. If you do, see 1-4.

o-__-o• 5 years ago

Bitwarden server phones home every install. In order to remove the phoning home bit, you must recompile the entire codebase. I wonder if this rust alternative makes that easier to remove...

ClumsyPilot2• 5 years ago

"3) if you don't trust the OSS code, audit it or at least look through it. That's the whole point of OSS."

Thats an outright fantasy, every day I rely on like 50 pieces of software written in 20 different languages and frameworks. They are updated multiple times a month. How many man hours would it take? 1000 a week?

Proffesional developers couldn't find heartbleed for years, you really think anyone would notice a hidden backdoor in software like this withing a year?

hda1113• 5 years ago

4) this not 100% true. To get someone’s passwords you just have to compromise their bitwarden_rs to include a malicious web client that sends the master password to the attacker if the user logs in. This is a different story of course when the web client is never used. Then it is impossible to get the passwords because it’s encrypted at client side.

sneak10• 5 years ago

You self-host it. The data is going to your own server.

ryan292• 5 years ago

Isn't the same thing true for every password manager? What's stopping LastPass from pushing an update that steals all my passwords? What's stopping Chrome from auto-updating to a version that sends every password I enter to Google?

It's not fair to single out just Bitwarden IMO.

paulryanrogers• 5 years ago

You could restrict its network access to only your LAN. Though in that case you could only sync within your LAN.

kayson• 5 years ago

I had the same concern. There's also the matter of supporting upstream development, which the maintainer does address in his readme. I ended up paying for a premium subscription of vanilla Bitwarden, which I self host. Sure it's overkill on resources and number of containers, but it's still insignificant. It seems slightly more safe to trust a company that depends on the software for revenue, if I'm going to use it without auditing the source. I've also e-mailed their support quite a few times, and they're great. It just doesn't feel right to me to do that while using a free custom backend to avoid the cost...

fraktl2• 5 years ago

I love Bitwarden. It's a great piece of software and it's reasonably priced. We use it at my place of work (I pushed to install and use Bitwarden on the company level). I also tried the Bitwarden_RS, it does the same work however it's not suited for company use as it lacks the feature to create groups. There's an open issue that provides a workaround, however that workaround proved to be unusable. I tried to reach out to maintainers to see whether the feature could be implemented and paid for their effort but.. let's just say the answer was "No.".

Long story short - we use official Bitwarden and are paying for it and couldn't be happier. Bitwarden_RS looks like a cool toy, but I can't see any reason why anyone would run it. It's good for personal passwords, but Bitwarden itself offers free service so there's no need to venture down the self-hosted road.

rbut2• 5 years ago

I run bitwarden_rs for exactly the reason you stated, for personal passwords.

It took a few seconds to add to my portainer (docker) server and now I host my vault and keep it safe within my LAN.

fullstop• 5 years ago

I ran bitwarden_rs for a bit on a digital ocean node, but ultimately decided to buy a premium membership because it was less than $5/mo and I think that they will do a better job securing the system and keeping things up to date than I would in my spare time.

Macha3• 5 years ago

It's good for personal passwords, but Bitwarden itself offers free service so there's no need to venture down the self-hosted road.

It's a trust issue. I don't trust my passwords on someone else's server. I don't trust free services to remain free forever. I don't trust paid services to not increase the fees 4x over a few years.

The alternative to bitwardenrs or bitwarden/server is not bitwarden.com for me given the areas I'm concerned with, it's going back to KeePass + Syncthing.

I think the reticence to provide the group features in bitwarden_rs may come from being unwilling to too blatantly step on the toes of Bitwarden LLC by producing a $0 drop in alternative to their paid service. bitwarden_rs is open source and bitwarden/server is _mostly_ open source (Some SSO related features are not), so it seems worthwhile to get along and not need to fork the ecosystem.

StavrosK• 5 years ago

Agreed, especially with how easy bitwarden_rs is to deploy (I wrote a three-line file and deployed it to my Dokku server and that was it).

fraktl2• 5 years ago

It's a trust issue. I don't trust my passwords on someone else's server.

They don't have your decryption key, therefore they save encrypted blobs and have no means to obtain your password. This takes care of trust issue - it simply is not an issue and never will be.

Even if malicious employee does something out of the ordinary or "hacker" gets the database, they still have the impossible task of breaking the encryption (which for all intents and purposes is impossible as of right now).

This returns us back to my starting point - there's *no objective* reason to use bitwarden_rs, apart from curiosity and/or convenience. I'm not saying it SHOULD not be used. We are all free to make choices as we see fit and don't need to justify them, however the reasons you listed are not reasons at all because the concerns you have don't exist.

chrismorgan• 5 years ago

I run bitwarden_rs for my own passwords because I want to run my own stuff for anything like passwords. (Previously I used KeePassX, and my biggest issue with it was that it was mostly tied to one device, depending on whatever file-based sync you might set up, and I never did—barring backups—so it was only ever on my main laptop, not on any secondary laptop or phone unless I jumped through some hoops to use one of the backups.)

I don’t run the official Bitwarden server because its system requirements are much too high for my liking.

Meanwhile, bitwarden_rs uses ~24MB disk space, ~24MB RAM, and <0.03% CPU on my single-core Vultr box.

Oh yeah, one other practical reason I couldn’t/wouldn’t go with bitwarden.com’s free plan: I’ve got a few TOTP things in my vault, gotta pay for that.

chousuke2• 5 years ago

I chose to use bitwarden_rs because the official server is huge, and deploying it seemed like a massive pain.

Before installing the rust version I actually went through the code to check that it wasn't doing anything untoward; it wasn't a very thorough review, but it took a couple hours. Given the fact that you don't actually need to trust a Bitwarden server, I'm not too concerned about using an "unofficial" implementation.

Black1012• 5 years ago

a simple rsync client that could extract passwords from the data would be nice

Spivak• 5 years ago

Bitwarden has a CLI tool which is pretty good.

Black1012• 5 years ago

what I mean is that why do you need bitwarden at all?

anaganisk• 5 years ago

Why not just get down to the basics write it yourself, like use rsync | pgp/openssl aes | rg/grep, isn't that what you want basically?

holtalanm• 5 years ago

I switched to Bitwarden when LastPass changed their policy for multi-device users. I'm happy to say the transition was completely painless.

CraigJPerry• 5 years ago

Even their CSV import worked flawlessly and my CSV export from Lastpass looked like a train wreck to parse but everything is present and correct in bitwarden.

koheripbal• 5 years ago

Did you consider KeePass or one of the variants?

FlyingSnake2• 5 years ago

I use KeePass on one of my projects and I find Bitwarden much better than KeePass. We're moving to Bitwarden soon to keep it seamless across teams.

hojjat12000• 5 years ago

I'm using KeePass. On Linux, windows and android and Google drive to sync the database. it is a hassle. The graphics look terrible. And most of the times the keeweb plugin doesn't really work on Firefox and I have to copy paste the password. But I have been using it for a long time now and got used to it. The best thing about it is the plugin system. I would not suggest it, I think bit warden does all of this and is a lot more user friendly.

cocoa19• 5 years ago

I do use KeePass for work, since we're not authorized to put passwords on the cloud, but device synchronization and browser auto fill is a pain.

For personal, Bitwarden is much better. Browser plugins just work, android auto fill just works, passwords synchronized across devices, support for auto filling payment information. 2FA support.

jarenmf• 5 years ago

Same here. I switched from LastPass and I really like the UX more than LastPass. It is less intrusive and feels more polished and snappier.

nwah1• 5 years ago

The UX is actually kind of bad. I think it is electron-based, the menus are far from a work of art, and the folder management seems very primitive.

But that said, it is by far the best product despite this.

sirtaj• 5 years ago

I switched over when I realised the Lastpass browser integration was chewing up CPU and significantly slowing down my browsing experience.

steviedotboston• 5 years ago

Something about running your own password manager server seems very risky to me.

sneak10• 5 years ago

The desktop[1] and mobile clients have a local database, so if the server is offline, you still have all of your data, you just can't sync.

[1]: Note that the Bitwarden desktop client has a major remote code execution vulnerability that the developer has closed WONTFIX, so I don't recommend running the stock one without patching that out (as well as the spyware they embed in it).

teekert4• 5 years ago

Any more information on your claims? This is the first time I hear of this...

bri3d2• 5 years ago

Not linking to the "major RCE vulnerability" is sensationalist posting at its finest.

I can assume you are referring to... the automatic updater? https://github.com/bitwarden/desktop/issues/552

Shish2k• 5 years ago

I switched to using this because keepass didn’t have a good way of syncing its database with iOS devices, and the official bitwarden server has too many moving parts (including MS-SQL with no support for open source databases??) - aside from missing ssh-agent support, I’m loving all of it :)

chipsa• 5 years ago

SQL isn't as portable as people would like. Especially when you're trying to stay high performance as you're dealing with millions of customers. Once you start building for a specific SQL server, it hard to switch to another variant.

teekert4• 5 years ago

I set it up in a couple of minutes using Docker-compose with Traefik. I love that Bitwarden has clients and plugins everywhere (FF and iOS being most relevant to me) and I can self-host. The sweetspot for me. I have had too many conflicts with my KeepassXC database on Nextcloud in the past, time for a solution with integrated sync.

Btw the "custom server" setting is a bit hidden, it is behind the cogwheel in the upper left in most cases.

FlyingSnake2• 5 years ago

Another satisfied user of `bitwarden_rs` here, and I can vouch for it. I migrated from LastPass and couldn't be more happier. The setup is pretty simple and I even managed to migrate it to a new server without any hassles. All the apps work flawlessly.

The peace of mind in having all your sensitive data under your control is totally worth it.

jamienicol• 5 years ago

Personally, having my sensitive data under my own control (but internet facing) terrifies me. I know enough to know that there are risks, and yet wouldn't have a clue about how to make it secure.

viro3• 5 years ago

I had to same thought so I put behind a VPN. a little less convenient. but WAY more secure

yepguy• 5 years ago

Just connect to it via wireguard or tailscale instead of exposing it to the entire internet.

pavon• 5 years ago

My self-hosted bitwarden server is only accessible from the LAN. Since the full password database is cached locally on each client, you can use it to lookup existing passwords just fine without a connection to the server. Bitwarden does require a connection to the server to add passwords, as it isn't a distributed architecture, so this setup does prevent you from adding new passwords while you are out and about, but I don't have the need to do that often, and in the rare occasions when I do, I write them on scrap paper in my wallet till I get home.

Nextgrid• 5 years ago

My concern about this is less about making it secure but keeping it secure. Zero-day vulnerabilities are a thing and you can never be 100% safe against those, so the next best thing is to have good monitoring in place so you get alerted when something nefarious is going on. This unfortunately requires 24/7 monitoring that's better left off to a dedicated team.

technorange• 5 years ago

I would set it up locally on raspberrypi with PiVPN and only allow specific IP (bitwarden IP) to be accessible via that VPN connection. Also you will need self-signed cert installed on the devices where you want to access bitwarden if you dont have a public domain.

zzyzxd2• 5 years ago

The peace of mind in having all your sensitive data under your control is totally worth it.

I used to have some illusions that "if I self host, I am in control", and "if I don't connect my home infra to the internet, I am safe". Later I realized neither is true.

I can't trust all the consumer grade devices in my network, I don't trust a software just because it is open source. And I don't have time to keep up with all the security patches and do security auditing / vulnerability scan routinely...etc.

It is fine to self host hobby stuff for fun, but professionally managing sensitive data is a full time job.

arsome2• 5 years ago

Just set up backups, enable apt unattended upgrades for major security patches and forget the rest.

If you want to really get paranoid, pass it all through wireguard or ssh tunnels, but for bitwarden at least it's all client side encrypted anyways, you could probably run it on a very out of date system without issue.

the_duke• 5 years ago

Agreed, managing secure servers is a full time job.

The situation with Bitwarden is a bit different though. Secrets are encrypted on the clients, the server never sees decrypted data.

simias• 5 years ago

Assuming that you're not a high profile target self-hosting does make it rather unlikely that you'll get pwned in this case.

An attacker can justify allocating a lot of resource to pwn bitwarden.com. If you manage to break into the vaults you're bound to find something juicy, just because of how large the target is.

Or you could decide to pwn me. Figure out where my bitwarden is hosted, what my config looks like, what mistakes I might have made setting it up, then maybe find a way in. Then it's just the start, since the passwords are encrypted on disk, so at best you have access to an encrypted sqlite database. Now you need to find a way to get me to leak my vault key. Maybe I sometimes use the web interface? Maybe not. Who knows.

After all of that you may realize that all of my passwords are either not super important or require some form of 2FA, therefore wasting your time.

But hey, you can log into my hacker news account!

Security through irrelevancy.

Barrin92• 5 years ago

I mean at the end of the day your data is encrypted before it leaves your device and unless someone breaks encryption you can display it on a banner ad on Times Square and it doesn't make a difference.

Personally I think hosting the server locally doesn't give much benefit because I'm more likely to screw things up than Bitwarden is on that front.

ErneX• 5 years ago

I use it and it's great. Best way to self host it imo.

AnIdiotOnTheNet5• 5 years ago

My company used to use the unmaintained "CorporateVault", but switched to Bitwarden_rs after Flash (which CorporteVault used for copying to the clipboard) was deprecated. Bitwarden_rs was chosen because it had a relatively painless install compared to pretty much everything else I looked at, requiring only one Docker container. It's not bad.

rubatuga2• 5 years ago

You don’t even need docker if you build from source

AnIdiotOnTheNet5• 5 years ago

Maybe you didn't get the whole "I picked it because it was easy to install" part. Building software from source is pretty much the exact opposite of that.

hda1113• 5 years ago

You give in trust your company’s passwords to a random dude’s open source project that was never audited professionally. Seems a very risky thing to do.

0xbkt• 5 years ago

Both server impls end up with a bunch of binary crap in the end.

chousuke2• 5 years ago

The only thing you have to trust on a BitWarden server is the Javascript client that it serves you, and using that is entirely optional as you can just use other clients. The server could be explicitly malicious and still safe to use.

bitwarden_rs bundles the upstream JS in its default containers, so it's the same code that you'd be running from bitwarden.com

imwillofficial2• 5 years ago

Even if using this, remember to get a bitwarden license. It’s $10 for a whole year and keeps their dev afloat.

dastx4• 5 years ago

Please please please do this. I have plenty of issues with their prioritisation but at the end of the day, Bitwarden is extremely cheap, and is a great product. There is little to no reason to not pay that $10 a year.

mjthompson4• 5 years ago

I use 1Password and still pay for a Bitwarden licence to support development of a viable open source alternative.

imwillofficial2• 5 years ago

This is awesome, low barrier to entry, high quality product.

gyvastis• 5 years ago

Just subscribed to Bitwarden. Was long overdue! Need to give back.

wufocaculura• 5 years ago

anyone moved from Keepass(XC) to bitwarden?

I do see advantage of being cloud based as a way to avoid database conflicts (in my case 3 windows machines + mobile), but I wonder what can surprise me here. Is bitwarden's browser integration similar to KeepassXC (Keepass helper + KeepasXC-browser)?

Bitwarden_rs: Unofficial Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust

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