'It would also require the target to lower their password complexity settings.'

'This issue was only possible in the unlikely event that the attacker knew the user's account information and the exact time a password had been generated,' wrote a company spokesperson.

When reached for comment, Kaspersky confirmed - but downplayed - the problem identified by Bédrune. 'All the passwords it created could be bruteforced in seconds,' writes Bédrune.īédrune's team submitted the vulnerability to Kaspersky through HackerOne's bug bounty program in June of 2019, and Ledger's blog post says Kaspersky notified potentially affected users in October of 2020. Knowing when the password was generated, even approximately, would therefore give a hacker vital information in an attempt to crack a victim's account. While that sounds super technical, it essentially boils down to KPM using the time as the basis for its pseudo random number generator. Unfortunately, according to security researcher Jean-Baptiste Bédrune (opens in a new tab), a bad coding decision meant that the passwords it generated weren't truly random and as a result were relatively easy to brute force - a hacking technique using specialized tools to try hundreds of thousands (or millions) of password combinations in an attempt to guess the right one.īédrune, who is a security researcher for the cryptocurrency hard-wallet company Ledger (opens in a new tab), writes that when generating a supposedly random password, KPM used the current time as its 'single source of entropy.'

The Kaspersky Password Manager (opens in a new tab) (KPM), a free tool used to generate and manage online passwords, has long been a popular alternative to the likes of LastPass or 1Password. Password managers are a vital line of defense in the battle for internet security - which makes it all the more painful when they shit the bed.

Kaspersky password manager price