LastPass password manager
Contents
1. Access the page where you usually fill in your username and password but instead of filling it in yourself you can let LastPass do that for you Possibly LastPass already filled in your credentials but in case not just hit the grey star like LastPass logo in one of the form fields and select your saved login form LastPass will then fill in your username and password and you only have to hit enter or the login button to log into the website However unlikely it is possible that LastPass wont recognize the website login form In that case you need to access you LastPass vault search for the saved website form and Groups are user defined collections of login forms Tom Gijselinck A short guide to LastPass copy the password of that form and paste it in the required field This is cumbersome but it will not often be necessary to use this method Accessing your LastPass vault and viewing your saved login forms is explained in subsection 3 5 3 3 Adding passwords to your vault In subsection 3 1 we ve explained how to add website login credentials to your LastPass vault We let LastPass automatically detect our new account But in case you yourself want to add a password to your vault e g you want to add a password of a non website application you need to add it manually We will explain how to do that in this subsection First hit the red LastPass logo in the top right corner of your browser In the menu that appeared select2. Tools and Add Site Then you get a warning which tells you that LastPass automatically detects and saves login forms But because we re not dealing with website login forms here we just hit yes to dismiss the warning In the new window that appears we can fill in the username and password and if you want you can add some notes Hit ok to save the password to your vault Next time if you need those credentials you can access your LastPass vault and view your newly saved password to use them See subsection 3 5 for more info 3 4 Generate random secure passwords We already mentioned that it is important to use different and difficult passwords for each website Next to the fact that it is difficult to remember those passwords it s also not an easy job to forge such good passwords For both problems LastPass offers the solution In LastPass it is possible to generate secure and random passwords In this subsection we will explain how you can do that To generate a secure random password with LastPass first hit the red LastPass logo in the top right corner of your browser In the menu that appeared select Generate Secure Password In the new window that appears we can generate a random password By default the random generated passwords are pretty good But if you want to have truly secure passwords you ll have to fine tune the password generator For this you ll have to tick the check box Show Advanced Options which let you modify the setti
3. ality If you are interested in additional information we recommend the LastPass user manual which you can find at https helpdesk lastpass com the print version can be found at https helpdesk lastpass com full pdf 4 AES Advanced Encryption Standard is the current industry standard for encryption It is based on the Rijndael cipher developed by two Belgian cryptographers Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen both graduates at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven faculty of Engineering 1 http www aescrypt com Gpg4win pgp implementation for windows http www gpg4win org doc en gpg4win compendium html AES Crypt http www aescrypt com documentation Tom Gijselinck A short guide to LastPass We hope everything is explained in a clear and not to detailed manner so you can quickly begin using LastPass without any hassle We strongly encourage to begin using LastPass for creating and storing strong passwords for your different internet accounts In these days of modern society where almost everything is connected to the internet we think it is very important to be conscious about our privacy which is ultimately determined by how secure we protect our online information In the first place it is very important to use difficult and different passwords for your online accounts The LastPass password manager can help you with this task References References 1 Advanced Encryption Standard URL https en wikiped
4. you forget lose your LastPass master password e your data on the LastPass servers is lost security breach fire natural disaster e you have no internet access but you need your passwords Creating a secure backup of your LastPass vault consists of two steps 1 export your LastPass vault as a CVS file unprotected 2 encrypt the unprotected CVS file with a password The second step is very important because otherwise your passwords can be read by everyone who has access to your backup 5 1 Exporting your LastPass vault The first step is downloading all your passwords from the LastPass server to your computer To do that you need to log into your LastPass account Once logged in hit the red LastPass logo in the top right corner of your browser In the menu that appeared select Tools Advanced Tools Export To and select LasPass CVS File LastPass asks your master password and after you ve entered it the CVS file will be downloaded Tom Gijselinck A short guide to LastPass 5 2 Encrypting your LastPass backup Once you ve stored your backup on disk it is very important to protect this data Otherwise everyone who can lay their hands on your backup has full access to all your passwords If you use the pgp encryption program you can use this to encrypt your backup Otherwise we recommend using an encryption program which implements the AES Rijndael encryption algorithm One such a program is AES Crypt which is free and open sou
5. you want to view your Dropbox username and password you type in dropbox The results are shown below the search field Hit the grey pencil logo of the website you need to view and edit it A new window will appear where you can view all the saved information To view your password you have to hit the grey eye icon If you only need your password you can just right click the website in the result list and select Copy Password Then you need to right click again in the field where you want to fill in the password and select Paste Your password will be filled in that field 4 Limitations Like most security systems LastPass is not flawless e On may 3 2011 LastPass discovered an anomaly in their incoming and outgoing traffic which could have been a potential security breach However administrators could not determine the root cause of the anomalies and there have been no verified reports of user data loss or password leaks To adress the situation LastPass decommissioned the potentially breached servers so they could be rebuilt 2 e In february 2011 a security hole was discovered by researcher Mike Cardwell LastPass solved it within hours but there was disagreement over the severity Cardwell stated that people should be very concerned but LastPass reported that there was no evidence of exploitation LastPass however implemented in addition some extra security features 2 e In the summer of 2013 researchers at the university of Berkely
6. asa csop aa p ee ke GS awe oe Eas 8 6 Epilogue 8 References 10 How to use this guide Not every reader needs all information presented in this guide Therefore we suggest some guidelines how to read this document An introduction to LastPass can be found in section 1 If you are only interested in installing and using LastPass straight out of the box you only need to read section 2 subsection 3 1 and subsection 3 2 If you are also interested in security and strength of passwords read subsection 3 4 Should you need to add to or edit manually passwords in your vault see subsection 3 3 and subsection 3 5 In section 4 the limitations of LastPass are covered To backup your LastPass vault you can find instructions in section 5 Finally section 6 concludes this document 1 An introduction to LastPass LastPass is a password manager LastPass remembers your passwords for you by storing them securely on the internet in your LastPass vault Your vault is encrypted with one master password This is the only password you ll ever have to remember You can access your vault on the internet You only have to fill in your master password and then you have access to all your passwords LastPass automatically detects website login forms Once a password is saved the next time you have to log into that website you can use LastPass to fill in the login form In short LastPass is a very handy tool that remembers your passwords so you don t have to In
7. computer security LastPass password manager a short guide Tom Gijselinck tomgijselinck gmail com lst August 2014 Often you have to use a username and a password to use a website Examples are dropbox hotmail facebook etc For security reasons it is necessary to use a different password for each website And although not always required it is best to use strong passwords Of course it is an impracticable task to remember all those complex passwords And that s where LastPass can help us With LastPass you can save all your passwords in a vault Each time you have to log into a website you can use LastPass to fill in the form The only thing you need to remember is your master password This document describes how to install and use the LastPass password manager on PC Contents Abstract 1 How to use this guide 2 1 An introduction to LastPass 2 2 Installation 3 3 Usage 3 3 1 Adding website login forms to your vault 0 000004 3 3 2 Using LastPass to log into a website 2 0 ee ee ee 4 Tom Gijselinck A short guide to LastPass 3 3 Adding passwords to your vault 2 ee 5 3 4 Generate random secure passwords 2 2 eee ee ee 5 3 5 View and edit your passwords 0 00 eee eee eee 6 4 Limitations 6 5 Backup your LastPass vault 7 5 1 Exporting your LastPass vault 0 002 00 eee eee 7 5 2 Encrypting your LastPass backup 00000 eee 8 53 Use your backup lt lt s
8. discovered multiple vulnerabilities in diverse features in web based password managers like LastPass RoboForm Myllogin They stated that an attacker can learn a user s credentials for arbitrary websites because of those vulnerabilities The root causes are diverse and their study suggests that it remains to be a challenge for the password managers to be secure The researchers first revealed their discoveries to companies of the Tom Gijselinck A short guide to LastPass password managers for giving them a chance to solve the vulnerabilities Most of them including LastPass reacted quickly and closed the security holes 3 5 As you can see LastPass is not perfect and there have been issues Although possible there s never been a prove that user data was stolen from the LastPass database Also because password managers like LastPass store all your passwords at one location they are a good target for hackers One vulnerability is enough to lose all your passwords The bottom line is that you should take into account that LastPass is not perfectly secure but the chances of data theft are rather small For the average user LastPass offers enough security However to prevent yourself from losing all your passwords in your LastPass vault you should create a backup This is explained in the next section Backup your LastPass vault 5 Backup your LastPass vault There are multiple reasons why you should backup your LastPass vault e
9. ia org wiki Advanced_ Encryption_Standard visited on 15 07 2014 LastPass Security breach URL https en wikipedia org wiki Password 5C_ strength 5C Bit Z5C_strength 5C_threshold visited on 12 07 2014 Z Li et al The Emperor s New Password Manager Security Analysis of Web based Password Manag Paper University of California Berkely 2013 URL http devd me papers pwdmgr usenix14 pdf visited on 12 07 2014 Password strength Bit strength threshold URL https en wikipedia org wiki Password 5C_strength 5C Bit 5C_strength 5C_threshold visited on 29 06 2014 Wachtwoordmanagers als LastPass maandenlang kwetsbaar geweest voor hackers Dutch URL http www pcmweb nl nieuws wachtwoordmanagers als lastpass maandenlang kwetsbaar geweest voor hackers html visited on 12 07 2014 10
10. ngs of the generator For the necessary password strength tick the following check boxes only A Z a z 0 9 Special Subsequently set Password Length to 13 or higher This will generate passwords that fulfil the minimum requirements for password strength 4 You can use the generated passwords for new accounts or use it as a replacement for old bad passwords It is recommended to use different and secure passwords for all your 3The best result is when the number of possible characters is greatest and each character has the same chance to be chosen For more information about password strength see the excellent wikipedia article at https en wikipedia org wiki Password_strength Tom Gijselinck A short guide to LastPass accounts on the internet If you have old passwords that don t fulfil the requirements for a secure password you are encouraged to use the LastPass password generator to replace the bad passwords with good passwords With LastPass this is easily done 3 5 View and edit your passwords If yow re logged into your LastPass account you can view and edit all your saved login forms in your LastPass vault To do this you need to hit the red LastPass logo in the top right corner of your browser In the menu that appeared select My LastPass Vault A new tab will be opened in your browser showing your LastPass vault To search a website type the website in the Search Vault field at the top of the page For example if
11. rce We refer to the documentation for explanation on using these programs Note that PGP is a bit difficult to master but has very powerful capabilities AES Crypt is an easy to use program and thus recommended for the average user 5 3 Using your backup You can use your backup for offline access to your passwords or to recover from data loss on the LastPass server Reading you LastPass backup is easy you can simply open the CVS file in a spreadsheet program like MS Office Excel You could also use a text editor like notepad to read the file but using a spreadsheet program gives you the advantage of an easy to read presentation See http office microsoft com en us excel help text import wizard HP010102244 aspx CTT 5 amp o0rigin HP010099725 for importing a CVS file in Microsoft Excel If you use other programs search the accompanied documentation for importing SVS files for the necessary steps In case of data loss on the LastPass server you can import your backup into your LastPass vault Just follow the import wizard in LastPass To start this wizard hit the red LastPass logo in the top right corner of your browser In the menu that appeared select Tools Import From LastPass and select Import Then you select your backup on diska dn hit Open 6 Epilogue In this document we ve explained how to install and use the LastPass password manager We ve only included the essential elements Of course LastPass offers a lot more function
12. ropbox homepage https www dropbox com There we hit the sign up button to create our new dropbox account We use John as first name Doe as last name johndoeQmailinator com as email and 79 amXzf6R amp as our random secure password Once filled in we hit the sign up button If everything went all right LastPass detects our new login credentials and suggests to save it to the LastPass vault Hit save new website to save your username and password to your vault A new window will appear where you can modify the name of this login form and if you want you can add this form to an existing or new group Finally hit save and your website will be added to your vault The next time you need to fill in the login form of this website in our example www dropbox com you can let LastPass fill in the username and password For more details on logging into websites using LastPass see subsection 3 2 3 2 Using LastPass to log into a website Once we ve saved a login form of a website to our LastPass vault we never need to manually fill in that form again We can just use LastPass for filling it in for us We will now explain how you can use LastPass for logging into websites First you need to be logged in your LastPass account For this to be true you only need to have installed LastPass and filled in your master password Once logged in it is very easy to let LastPass fill in login forms for you Just navigate to the website you need to log into
13. the following sections we will explain how to install LastPass and how you can use it on your computer Tom Gijselinck A short guide to LastPass 2 Installation For downloading and installing LastPass we refer to the user manual found at https nelpdesk lastpass com getting started downloading and installing which contains all the necessary steps 3 Usage Once LastPass is installed we can begin using it We will explain the following applications of LastPass e adding website login forms to your vault e using LastPass to log into a website e adding passwords to your vault e generate random secure passwords e view and edit your passwords We will now cover each of these topics individually 3 1 Adding website login forms to your vault Introduction Often you have to use a username and a password to use a website Examples are dropbox hotmail facebook etc For security reasons it is necessary to use a different password for each website And although not always required it is best to use strong passwords These are passwords you wont find in a dictionary have a length of 13 characters or more and contain lower case characters upper case characters numbers and special characters An example of a good password would be 79 amp amXzf6R amp 4 Of course it is nearly an impracticable task to remember all those complex passwords And that s where LastPass can help us With LastPass you can save all your passwords in a va
14. ult This vault is protected with a master password chosen by you so that only you can access it Each time you have to log into a website you can use LastPass to fill in the form The only thing you need to remember is your master password In the previous sections we ve already set up your LastPass account protected with your master password Now we will add a website login form First we will explain how to add a website login form and then we will illustrate this with an example Consequently it is of utmost importance to choose a good master password that you can store in a safe place your memory would be best Tom Gijselinck A short guide to LastPass Adding a website First you need to be logged in your LastPass account For this to be true you only need to have installed LastPass and filled in your master password Navigate to the website you need to log into Access the page where you usually fill in your username and password and fill in the required fields username and password Hit the enter key or Login button to log into the website Once logged in LastPass will suggest to save this new website login form Accept this by saving it to your LastPass vault From now on you ll never have to manually fill in this password and username again because LastPass will do this for you Example As an example we will create a Dropbox account for a fictional person named John Doe johndoe mailinator com First we navigate to the D
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