Your passwords are safe when using the Agile Keychain format
Your passwords are safe
If you read nothing else, we want to make sure you that you know your secrets are safe in 1Password.
In order for anyone to access information about your 1Password data (such as the titles and URLs of your items but not usernames or passwords), they would need to gain access to the Dropbox account you use to sync your 1Password data in the Agile Keychain format.
Even then, they would only have access to the metadata about your sensitive data (notably titles and URLs), not the sensitive data itself.
If you are syncing with iCloud or using Wi-Fi Sync, this does not apply. With both of those, 1Password has always used our OPVault security design.
So what's the news?
Dale Myers is an engineer who works for Microsoft. He recently posted “1Password Leaks Data” on his personal blog. It raises a well-documented issue, but it may still come as a surprise to some folks who, like Dale, were not aware of the differences between our two data formats: Agile Keychain and OPVault.
Importantly, however, in Dale's own words:
I’ve used 1Password for a few years now. … I have no worries at all that my passwords are still safe.
What's not news?
Dale makes some good observations in his post, but this isn’t a leak. A leak involves data made available to the public by accident, an attack that has breached security, or an unintended gap in security measures. In this case, there is no leak.
If the Agile Keychain format was insecure when used as intended, we would not risk your data by continuing to make it available.
Agile Keychain is an open, documented format, in which a design decision was made to store titles and URLs unencrypted — the same things available in your browser's bookmarks and history — to make searching within 1Password usable and provide a better experience for the devices in use at the time it was developed.
We have always openly discussed the state of the metadata in the Agile Keychain format (and the reasons behind it). Indeed, we also posted something on our own blog in response to the recent increase in attention to this matter: “When a Leak Isn’t a Leak”.
When we designed the Agile Keychain format in 2008, the iPhone 3G was current. If you owned one of those earlier iPhones, you'll remember how much less processing power they had compared to today's phones. Agile Keychain intentionally left some metadata unencrypted to avoid the battery and performance penalties that would've been incurred from having to do processor-intensive decryption for every operation.
But unencrypted doesn't necessarily mean vulnerable. The important thing to remember is that your Agile Keychain resides in your Dropbox account. Your Dropbox password (and two-step verification if you have enabled it) protect even your metadata from an attacker.
At the time, we felt that this was a sensible compromise. We no longer need to make this compromise. In fact, we've moved away from that with the OPVault format we created in 2012.
How to switch to OPVault
OPVault provides protection even for the metadata about your sensitive data. If that protection is an important part of your personal threat model, and you are currently syncing with Dropbox, consider switching to the OPVault format.
When to stick with Agile Keychain
Before we get to the step-by-step, we should be clear under which circumstances you would want to stick with Agile Keychain. You will need to stick with Agile Keychain if you:
- use an old version of 1Password which does not support OPVault.
- rely on 1PasswordAnywhere, since it is built in to the Agile Keychain format.
- do not wish to use Wi-Fi Sync with 1Password for Android. (Using Wi-Fi Sync on your Android device will forego Agile Keychain on Android, and you can use OPVault on your other devices.)
If you don't want to attempt the switch to OPVault, the Agile Keychain format keeps your sensitive data safe. As always, we recommend using a strong, unique Dropbox password and enabling two-step verification for your Dropbox account.
Otherwise, you can make the switch with confidence in the current version of 1Password. Just follow the steps in our support article here: