A vulnerability in the open-source password manager KeePass can be exploited to retrieve the master password from the software’s memory, says the researcher who unearthed the flaw.
The bad news is that the vulnerability is still unfixed and that a PoC exploitation tool – aptly named KeePass 2.X Master Password Dumper – is publicly available, but the good news is that the password can’t be extracted remotely just by exploiting this flaw.
“If you have a reasonable suspicion that someone could obtain access to your computer and conduct forensic analysis, this could be bad. Worst case scenario is that the master password will be recovered, despite KeePass being locked or not running at all.”
The issue affects SecureTextBoxEx, the software’s custom text box for entering the master password and other passwords during editing.
When ‘Password’ is typed, it will result in these leftover strings: a, s, s, w, o, r, d. The POC application searches the dump for these patterns and offers a likely password character for each position in the password.”
The vulnerability affects the KeePass 2.X branch for Windows, and possibly for Linux and macOS. It has been fixed in the test versions of KeePass v2.54 – the official release is expected by July 2023.
