I still don’t get why password managers builders think it’s a great idea to store MFA token together with the password, totally defeating the purpose of MFA in the first place.
Not really. MFA still protects against the much more common case where the password itself is compromised, either through a breach, reuse, phishing, interception, bad storage, etc. An MFA code is short-lived and can’t simply be reused later, unlike a password.
Keeping the password and MFA secret in the same password manager reduces separation (if someone fully compromises your vault, they will gain access to both factors). But that doesn’t make MFA pointless; it just means it doesn’t protect you against that particular failure mode.
And if someone has full access to your password manager, you already have a much bigger problem.
KeePassXC is definitely much more mature right now. I mean, Sesame is similar in being local-first and not requiring a cloud service, but I am aiming for a more modern consumer style experience. There is still a lot of work ahead to get it up to speed. I might also build more products around it eventually, so there’s a consistent ecosystem.
(and of course, it would be great to eventually surpass some of the existing projects :) )
subscription style paid program, of course. Starting at 1 dollar a month now, until they get market penetration, then they will jack up prices (for increased opex, ostensibly). The classic SaaS playbook.
I like that this could be self hosted. I don't have anything against the big password managers (I use and pay for one), but they are a massive target for hackers for obvious reasons. If everyone could self host their own vault on a personal domain, the reward for hackers is much more difficult to get access to.
I don't really have anything against the big password managers either. I just don't love having to pay for a full year upfront with some of them. More than that though, a lot of them just don't quite fit what I want, or they feel a bit dated to use, like KeePassXC. That's a big part of why I started building Sesame. (and hoping to expand later on to have a more pleasurable ecosystem)
how does this compare to vaultwarden + bitwarden? my only concern there is that VW can throw self-host support out the door whenever they like. not that they'd have a reason to
vaultwarden + bitwarden is way more mature right now, but the main difference is that sesame is local-first by design. Vaultwarden also depends on staying compatible with bitwarden's clients/api, while this owns the whole stack
Yeah I can see what you mean, but it wasn't really intentional. I mainly wanted to avoid the usual black/blue security-product look. I will probably keep the general direction but give it more of its own identity over time. Thank you for sharing your opinion!
It's good that vibecoded software look vibecoded, because I then immediately know not to trust that it works, not to trust that it's secure, and not to trust that the maintainer will give a shit about it in six months.
Yes. Every lock entry point (manual, auto-lock timer, app shutdown) funnels through one function, so the behavior can't drift, that calls lock_for_lifecycle, which drops the unlocked session. Dropping UnlockedVault zeroizes the 32-byte vault key and the whole in-memory payload in place before deallocation: names, logins, notes, cards, SSH keys, TOTP material, history, trash. Parsed import rows are wiped on lock too, and a session epoch is bumped so any pending browser fill approval dies with the lock! (also to mention it does not cover swap and hibernation files) ((also to mention I couldn't link the lines to mentioned functions but if you want to take a look, look at these lines: src-tauri/src/vault/mod.rs:78 sesame-core/src/lib.rs:197 sesame-core/src/lib.rs:225 types.rs:2184 ))
(It still protects against a password leak, though, so doesn't entirely defeat the purpose of MFA.)
Keeping the password and MFA secret in the same password manager reduces separation (if someone fully compromises your vault, they will gain access to both factors). But that doesn’t make MFA pointless; it just means it doesn’t protect you against that particular failure mode.
And if someone has full access to your password manager, you already have a much bigger problem.
(and of course, it would be great to eventually surpass some of the existing projects :) )
I wouldn't trust any password manager or critical applications like this written after 2024
bitwarden/KeePassXC are already more than enough