Tell HN: Bitwarden does not export attachments in backups

233 points by howlett 3 years ago | 123 comments

I've been using Bitwarden for about 4 years now and cannot understand how a Password Manager does not export attachments when backing up your data. I understand this was the case when the only export format was a CSV file, but now with JSON files I can't get my head around the fact that I almost missed crucial SSH keys had I not checked the output. A simple solution would be to b64 encode each file and add it into an array!

It's even mentioned on their Help page - https://bitwarden.com/help/export-your-data/ but I still think it's a bit unacceptable that there isn't even a warning in the GUI about this.

And yes, I know there are ways to manually export the files, but I shouldn't have to do that.

Youden 3 years ago |

It's been raised but doesn't appear to be a large enough issue to be put on the roadmap: https://community.bitwarden.com/t/allow-attachments-to-be-ex...

The project is open-source, maybe send them a pull request?

hotpotamus 3 years ago | |

I like Bitwarden and open source, but attachments are a paid feature for them, so you'd be essentially working to add value to their paid features for free. That feels unfair to me.

Aeolun 3 years ago | | |

I think you’d be working to add quality to your backups for free. Sure, they’d also give it to other customers, but what matters is that you have it (and henceforth do not have to maintain your own fork).

Youden 3 years ago | | |

Isn't this argument basically true of any major open-source project? There's always a commercial user somewhere who benefits from your work without paying for it.

A contribution to Bitwarden would benefit the paid hosting, sure, but it'd also benefit folks who are self-hosting.

_flux 3 years ago | | |

Well the clients are still quite nice and you can use them with VaultWarden for free and get attachments.

that_guy_iain 3 years ago | |

> The project is open-source, maybe send them a pull request?

Just because a project is open-source doesn't mean they'll accept a pull request with your feature request in it.

matheusmoreira 3 years ago | | |

Indeed. Few things are worse than spending time and effort figuring out a complex repository, making and testing changes to the code and sending in a patch only to get ignored.

Youden 3 years ago | | |

I suggested that mainly because the original poster seemed to be saying "it's so easy, just do X", so it should be minimal effort to send a PR.

If it were to be something requiring more effort I'd suggest engaging with the project and asking if a PR would be welcome first.

Vladimof 3 years ago | |

I never switched to Bitwarden because I don't like how it was designed but this is clearly a huge bug even though I probably wouldn't use the feature to attach files.

waplot 3 years ago | | |

>because I don't like how it was designed

can you elaborate?

1una 3 years ago |

> A simple solution would be to b64 encode each file and add it into an array!

An individual file attachment can be as large as 500 MB[0]. It would make the JSON file too big to use.

Still, I do think that Bitwarden should warn users about it when exporting. Just mentioning it in the Help Center doesn't seem so helpful.

[0]: https://bitwarden.com/help/attachments/

ben0x539 3 years ago | |

> An individual file attachment can be as large as 500 MB[0]. It would make the JSON file too big to use.

The backup would be too big to use if it included all the data it's a backup of? What?

remram 3 years ago | | |

The JSON file would be too big to use as a JSON file. Another format could be used for backup.

manmal 3 years ago | |

Why is such a JSON file too big to use if it’s only ever handled by streaming parsers? SQLite would be a better backup format ofc.

vbezhenar 3 years ago | | |

AFAIK SQLite field limit is 2 GB, so if you're used to storing Blurays in your password database, that might be a limiting factor as well.

mdaniel 3 years ago | | |

Can you explain how sqlite is a better container for arbitrary binary files than zip?

I mean, I know "INSERT INTO files ('my-file.bin', X'CAFEBABE...')" gets it into sqlite, but how would a sane person get that content back out?

aceazzameen 3 years ago |

I recently switched from LastPass to Bitwarden, and LastPass has the same issue. I had to manually save all my attachments and upload them into their proper place on Bitwarden. It was frustrating, but also not a big deal in my case. Worse things have happened.

I wholeheartedly agree that these companies should have a warning that attachments won't export. Because I almost forgot about them.

jdeibele 3 years ago | |

Thank you for saying something about this. I make up answers to "security" questions like: first pet's name? Favorite teacher? and so on but that means that I have to record what the answer is.

I've been doing that in the notes section for LastPass. I think that I'm going to have to move to doing it in the Notes app since that works on all my Apple devices. And it looks like I can lock one Note without having to lock all of them.

mdaniel 3 years ago | | |

In case you haven't already seen it, 1P has effectively a "click button, get fake security question answers" and I love it: https://support.1password.com/generate-security-questions/

They use the "battery horse stable" scheme so you don't have to read crazy ascii over the phone to customer support

woojoo666 3 years ago | | |

Last I checked, notes are included in the export. This post is about attachments

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3 years ago | |

Is there any easy way to identify all the entries with an attachment on lastpass? I was planning to switch to bitwarden, but attachments have been my major concern.

How did you do it?

mdaniel 3 years ago | | |

Their CLI seems to support showing attachments: https://github.com/lastpass/lastpass-cli/blob/8767b5e53192ad...

sigio 3 years ago |

I use bitwarden/vaultwarden (self hosted), and didn't even know there was an attachment option, so haven't used it upto now. I did use notes (for storing stuff like ssh/gpg keys), and can confirm that these are exported correctly. Attachments are also not exported in vaultwarden as far as I can see.

I'll just stick to stuffing files in notes for now, as I had been doing.

mdaniel 3 years ago | |

> Attachments are also not exported in vaultwarden as far as I can see.

Understandable, since sibling comments are saying export happens on the client side, and Vaultwarden is merely a server-side replacement

Although also relevant is the sibling observation that if you're already running Vaultwarden isn't "backup" less "export from some faceless corporation" and more "take a backup of the vaultwanden database"?

ravi-delia 3 years ago | | |

In all fairness I think you can run Bitwarden self hosted too, so it would also just be a database backup

leetrout 3 years ago |

I went to bitwarden from dashlane that didnt even export secure notes

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dashlane/comments/gfwyvo/comment/fq...

This is the same thing again.

I switched to 1password before all the funding and feel like there arent any viable alternatives now.

Edit: to be clear this isnt me on reddit this thread is just what backed up bitwarden.

gonehome 3 years ago | |

1Password remains really great imo - people seem to use worse alternatives for ideological reasons but I don’t think there are any that are actually better.

zeroonetwothree 3 years ago | | |

How is it better than BitWarden? I’ve used both and they both seem fine but I didn’t see an obvious reason to prefer it. BW is a lot cheaper as well.

x3n0ph3n3 3 years ago | | |

I ditched it when they broke the ability to sync to the local file system. Before that, I was using syncthing to share my passwords between devices.

jeroenhd 3 years ago |

Looking at the export code: https://github.com/bitwarden/clients/blob/da5e4a57d026e0d093...

The entire export process seems to be client side. Altering the export to include files should be feasible though the Bitwarden devs might choose not to merge your code because allowing users to access all of those Azure buckets all at once must come at a significant cost.

My workaround for this is to stuff SSH keys and the like in secret fields rather than attachments. This doesn't work for larger files, but it works well enough for my use cases so far.

jka 3 years ago |

Can you migrate storage of your SSH keys in Bitwarden to custom fields[1]? Those should -- I think -- be exported with the contents of the vault.

[1] - https://bitwarden.com/help/custom-fields/#custom-fields-for-...

sigio 3 years ago | |

Custom fields, or notes, both are exported

AnonHP 3 years ago |

Bitwarden pivoted to serving enterprise needs (like SSO, collaboration) a few years ago and hasn’t given much attention to improving the basic product itself (there still aren’t additional types, like licenses, WiFi passwords, etc.). You can file this as an issue and wait.

capableweb 3 years ago | |

Just like every other product initially launched for consumers, eventually pivoting to enterprises and forgetting about the little guy.

Seems it's impossible for people to run companies for the average consumer. Are their cash-flow really so bad they can't help themselves going into the enterprise market or is there something else going on?

sokoloff 3 years ago | | |

Enterprises are vastly more willing to pay to have their problems solved than consumers. (I say this as I see the difference in behavior in my own two personas.)

Enterprises don’t blink at paying $50K/yr for something to improve security and save staff thousands of hours of time. Consumers are used to things being (or appearing to be) free. On a per-user basis, I’d expect consumers to ask more questions of support, while paying much less.

richardw 3 years ago | | |

Without meaning to disparage the OP, enterprises don’t put you on HN when their feature isn’t supported. They pay enough to focus the mind on important features.

Enterprises are an 80/20 play. Keep your top clients happy and you’ll be fine. The first time you get a large order you realise that’s where your focus should be.

waplot 3 years ago | |

bitwarden allows you to add custom fields and secure notes for anything that falls outside the usual email/password data.

laurent123456 3 years ago | |

I'm wondering why their enterprise clients are ok with this though. I would have thought they'd get more pressure from them since most businesses would not want to lose all their attachments if there's a problem.

phpisthebest 3 years ago | | |

As an Enterprise Client, I did not even know there was attachments, and i dont know what I would use attachments for...

dspillett 3 years ago | | |

Perhaps attachments isn't an enterprise priority over things like SSO support and other features that have seen changes and additions?

ancientsofmumu 3 years ago |

Quick note, the Secure Note field can store up to 10k characters (I think it is, last I looked) post-encryption - that's typically big enough for most SSH key types, but may not be big enough for some GPG key exports - I have one GPG key armor export too large to fit. Point being you can stuff a good amount of info in those Notes most times to get exported, but there is a limit to be aware of - the client should fail to save the data once you've crossed that limit if I recall correctly, red error text etc.

thiagocmoraes 3 years ago |

I just found out this now and I'm upset. I've been a paying user for a long time and won't use attachments anymore. Might as well consider migrating to a different password manager to migrate my attachments. Thanks for letting me know.

xanaxagoras 3 years ago |

You should move to vaultwarden and do regular offsite backups with one of the projects listed at the bottom here: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/wiki/Backing-up-y...

This will backup your entire database, including attachments, users, etc.

quyleanh 3 years ago |

This is one of my motivation to selfhosted Vaultwarden [0]. Full features, lightweight with Rust, privacy, and full control.

[0] https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

simplyfantash 3 years ago | |

I hope it wasn't really one of your motivations, because Vaultwarden implements the server API. The lack of attachment backup occurs at the Bitwarden client level.

ajb 3 years ago | | |

Yes, but if you're running your own server you can back up the server, you don't need to export.

Hellion 3 years ago | | |

If you Control the server, you can certainly control backups at a root level

adrianmonk 3 years ago |

I don't use Bitwarden, but I just read the docs about backups, which are here:

https://bitwarden.com/help/backup-on-premise/

Those say that the procedure for backups is to keep a copy of the entire bwdata directory. It doesn't say that you can or should use the export feature.

It seems like the export feature is meant for data migration, not for backups. Though they are related, they're not the same concept.

It probably wouldn't hurt to make this clearer in the GUI. In the export section, it could warn not to use it for backups and could give a link to the proper procedure.

anthropodie 3 years ago |

I have Bitwarden desktop/mobile apps and I keep them in sync exactly for this reason. In case something bad happens I can at least copy and paste individual password!

jmull 3 years ago |

... is there some better way to back up your bitwarden data than export?

Because if not, then I don't understand this. If you can't back up attachments, they can't be used for anything important. If they can't be used for anything important, then what are they for?

It would be better to not have attachments at all than not let people back them up.

chipsa 3 years ago |

Better solution that b64 the files is just make a zip file from the attachments with them in folders by the name of the entry. That said, I don't use the attachments feature (If I need to securely store files, I store them elsewhere).

snickerbockers 3 years ago |

What exactly is an "attachment" in this context? Ive been using BW for about a year now but I've never come across that term. Is it non-login data like the secure notes section?

tut-urut-utut 3 years ago | |

Paid version allows you to store files.

moughxyz 3 years ago |

File backups need to be done in real time, otherwise backing up gigabytes of data on demand would be infeasible.

We recently released this feature for Standard Notes[0]. Files you upload to your account from any device are automatically encrypted and backed up to a local folder on your computer.

Granting companies full custody of your files today feels reckless; local backups are a must. And better it be encrypted.

[0]: https://standardnotes.com

longrod 3 years ago |

This makes a lot of sense. I use Notesnook [0] which also encrypts everything client side. It also doesn't export attachments in the automatic backups. I asked the devs and this is done to save user's bandwidth and also to make everything more reliable. Suppose the user's internet is slow or metered, what should be done then? Would the backup never be taken? That's obviously a bad idea since the notes are too important not to backup.

So it makes a sacrifice on the attachments to make sure backup of the more important stuff keeps working even when there's no internet. Moreover downloading all the attachments takes a lot of time and doing it every day (or whatever interval) wouldn't be a good user experience.

I think the Notesnook guys were thinking of adding cloud-to-cloud backups for attachments to work around this reliably.

[0] https://notesnook.com

nirvdrum 3 years ago | |

I'm not familiar with the tool, but naïvely I'd think offering an "include attachments" checkbox would give the user control over backup size. I know that might complicate the UI a bit and maybe even confuse user by having the option, but expecting all of your data to be backed up and only discovering that it isn't after it's too late isn't stellar UX either.

webdog 3 years ago |

This is very salient, I just left some feedback related to lack of functionality, in their community forums yesterday. I bought a subscription to use Bitwarden against 1Password, trying to switch from 1P to BW. I dislike 1P's arrogant customer service (Read their community forums for about an hour, and look at many of the responses from staff regarding feature requests) and my attitude towards them really soured when they flipped the switch on perpetual licensing.

So I was excited and went in with an open mind, and delighted to be supporting an open source company:

* The initial migration went off to a bad start as it didn't include everything from 1Password. Seemingly random data, and some attachments were missing. If I remember correctly, timestamps/creation dates didn't seem to migrate over, and some whole passwords weren't brought over, but no errors were reported from their migrator.

* When I went to setup my vault after the migration, I was disappointed to see that there was a distinct lack of password types. I have software licenses, credit cards, API keys, regular passwords, recovery tokens, (non-critical) GPG keys, SSH keys, etc etc that I store in my vault. BW only had/has 4 item types to choose from, which just isn't suitable if you want to correctly track the types of items for organization and filtering. There is support for custom fields, but it just isn't the same..

* No support for tagging. I tried to setup a nested folder structure alternatively, but the UX was not easy to use in the desktop application (I was assuming I could do something similar to a `mkdir -p path/to/nested/folder` but BW only allowed me to create a single folder item at a time. For 500 password items, and different "buckets" I keep to organize, I ended up abandoning folders and just kept everything in the root in a mish-mash setup.

I get that it's small and open source, and you have to temper expectations when comparing David (BW) vs Goliath (1P), but BW seems to have earned more community trust, and has an engaged community of fans. BW could absolutely provide a better experience than 1P both from a customer empathy standpoint, and from a product delivery perspective. But point 2 makes a failure (IMO) on point 1. Reading through their community forums, many of these (What I'd consider) table-stakes features have been left to rot on the tree of technical debt. Which makes me sad, because I'd pay a lot more than their current pricing model if they kept an open source attitude towards the product and could deliver more than just a "We're working on it! Stay tuned!" attitude after years of community comments. I'm gonna stick with 1P when the licenses come up for renewal, and use KeePass or Vault as an on-prem backup solution.

I truly, truly hope BW succeeds, because I'd love to move away from my current setup. But I'm not willing to capitulate my workflow because the company can't deliver on highly-requested/highly-coveted features.

I don't squarely put the blame on BW. This feels very common in the saas lifecycle: A feature has some sort of engagement/revenue metric attached to it, for growth tracking. Whether correlation is correct is a debate for another time, but many of these core features have an opaque effect on revenue or engagement (If you're a cynical product manager, an efficient tagging system correlates to less engagement, because I'm spending less time rooting around the user interface, which is less opportunity to use the application minute-by-minute), or it's considered plumbing-type work in which the revenue/engagement potential is spread out across the entire userbase, so the effect is less explosive (SSH key management[1], a niche feature requested by a loud subset of 1P users had huge awareness. But external sharing of items[2] was something I heard very little about, even though (objectively) external sharing casts a wider a shadow of net-new 1P users.

I digress. This just reminded me of the frustration I have with software: Feels like everything I want to use is always missing some key element that I have to trade off for another key element when looking at competitors.

[1] https://blog.1password.com/1password-ssh-agent/ [2] https://blog.1password.com/psst-item-sharing/

culpable_pickle 3 years ago |

Honestly, with 1Password's cloud only move, I firmly think there's a open position for a new major player in the password management space that learns from all the current players.

jiveturkey 3 years ago |

I don't think 1password does either? Anyone know for sure? I think they give you a separate attachments folder, but any item loses its association to any attachment.

mdaniel 3 years ago | |

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31706068

jiveturkey 3 years ago | | |

thanks. does the json for the pw item itself, reference the attachment?

Hellion 3 years ago |

I’m still on KeePass. I keep meaning to get off of it but it more or less works okay (not great)

I use windows, Debian, iOS, and Firefox as the browser on desktop. Any recommendations?

vbezhenar 3 years ago | |

I switched to iCloud passwords. It's terrible, but it works. When I'm not on iOS/macOS, I'm typing passwords manually looking at my phone. Not the best UX for sure.

clircle 3 years ago | |

Keepassxc plus the browser extension? Also, if it aint broke…

Hellion 3 years ago | | |

I’m not going to say it’s broken, but it sure is rough.

sir_brickalot 3 years ago | |

an underappreciated feature in Keepass are URL overrides so you can autorun RDP sessions, SSH sessions, SFTP sessions in other apps with filled in credentials. If Bitwarden had this feature, I'd probably switch.

tluyben2 3 years ago |

I have been bitten by this. It is quite weird imho.

ruffrey 3 years ago |

It’s worth taking a glance at other E2EE apps. I’m biased but EnvKey can handle huge content, though file support is in early stages.

foobiekr 3 years ago |

This is sadly common. 1Password does not either.

mdaniel 3 years ago | |

Incorrect, I just tested it:

    $ unzip -l 1PasswordExport-ILESALYKVFDNJH3K24FEO3QRHM-20220611-100457.1pux
    ...
       1952  01-01-1980 00:00   files/dbp6d2jjtfbwbp5tnqx6vw5jaa__developerID_installer.pem

foobiekr 3 years ago | | |

When exporting data, in any of the supported formats, 1password will warn the following:

Some of the items you attempted to export were documents. There is currently no support for exporting Documents from 1Password.

So apparently, it exports pems. That's great. It doesn't export most attachments.

edit: This is apparently new behavior in 1password8. If you have upgraded to the very latest version, the .1PUX export does seem to finally solve this problem. But that's new - it was not true for any previous version.

selykg 3 years ago | |

Sort of a vendor lock in type deal.

jwong_ 3 years ago | |

Main thing keeping me off switching to something else.

1Password's extensions getting worse with every update gets me closer each day though.

mdaniel 3 years ago | | |

The irony is that if they'd just open source them, it's not like that's where their real intellectual property lies and they may get a lot more help -- or at the bare minimum I can see what the extension is screwing up in my case and fix it while they "damn get around to it"

I'm waiting for someone to point out that BW's extensions are open source and are still a dumpster fire, but for me the difference is that BW started as a dumpster fire, so I don't feel compelled to bring their extension up to sane operating levels, whereas 1P's are _mostly_ right, and just need a tune-up here and there

rossmohax 3 years ago |

Thanks for heads up! I am a happy user for Bitwarden and wasn't aware of that.

hammyhavoc 3 years ago |

Wow, if true, this is a huge oversight.

onetom 3 years ago | |

It’s not something which you simply forget to think about. There must be a lot of features, which are more important, as in being requested for.

hammyhavoc 3 years ago | | |

I must have been forgetting since I started using it over a year ago. The software itself doesn't warn about this quirk.

replwoacause 3 years ago |

I’ve been using BW for 5 years but looks like I need to start the search for a new PW manager. Thanks for pointing this out.