Password managers are a convenient way to create unique passwords for every site, and remember them without too much trouble. KeePass 2 is one of the prominent players in this market, but the developer is getting into contested waters. As it turns out, he refused to patch a security flaw as he would lose ad revenue otherwise.
KeePass Is Vulnerable To MiTM Attack
In this day and age of data breaches and consumers demanding more privacy, there is no room for error or personal gain. KeePass 2 developer Dominik Reichl would like to argue that point, however, as he wants to ensure the ad revenue of his password manager tool is not affected.Even a security flaw will not make him change his mind, which is quite worrying.
KeePass 2 has a security flaw in its update check, which leaves room for hackers to exploit this vulnerability. A man-in-the-middle attack could be executed to let users patch their client with a fake update. Doing so would give assailants access to the stored passwords in the client, and wreak havoc on a large scale.
Fixing this vulnerability would require an upgrade by Reichl, which would encrypt all web traffic. However, in doing so, he would potentially lose out on a significant amount of ad revenue, which is invaluable to smaller developers. Then again, when consumers stop using KeePass 2 due to this vulnerability, there is more at stake than just ad revenue.
That being said, Reichl has indicated his plan to switch to encryption as soon as it is possible and financially feasible. Moreover, KeePass 2 users can always verify the integrity of the update they are downloading, which should mitigate the risk of a man-in-the-middle attack by a significant margin.
In the end, there seems to be a worrying trend in the world of software development. When creators value ad revenue over user security, things are evolving in the wrong direction. Security should always be the top priority as it will affect the entire business model. Knowingly exposing users to attack is not the right way to go.
Source: Engadget
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