Firefox team released Lockbox password manager for its users

Yesterday, March 26, the Firefox browser development team unveiled a new product called Firefox Lockbox , a password manager for mobile devices. According to the project’s FAQ page, only an iOS version is now available, but “an option for Android devices will soon appear.” Perhaps the FAQ just did not update, because the application is already on Google Play and is available for download. Also for acquaintance it is possible to look at a repository of the project on GitHub .

The idea of ​​the Firefox Lockbox is both simple and banal, and quite symbolic, as it solves a very common user case: extracting passwords from the browser. Firefox Lockbox is, in essence, the same password manager as 1password or KeePass, but it has synchronization out of the box with one of the popular browsers. The application allows you to extract user passwords and transfer them to the application without the transfer step in open form (if you unload your login passwords with your hands). Of course, not all users are able to extract their data, and some are not even aware of this possibility.
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But in this whole story there are a few big “buts”: Lockbox only works with Firefox accounts, plus it’s not completely clear who needs it and why Mozilla launches a mono application for storing passwords instead of doing more important things.

Firefox as a browser is going through hard times. According to Statista , in 2018, Firefox’s share dropped from 14% in January to 10% in December, with a low of 9.1% in November.



At the same time, over the same period, the share of Chrome increased from 50 to 70% - the main increase in the user's base of Google was due to users of IE and Edge, which at the end of last year resulted in a refusal to further develop Edge on the EdgeHTML engine and transition to Chromium. According to other estimates, the share of Chrome is slightly less - 65% of desktop devices, but Firefox is no better because of this: its share is still estimated at around 9%. The Mozilla browser cannot be comfortable in terms of comfort with Google Chrome in terms of multiplatform user experience, which also negatively affects FF performance.

Do you really need a Firefox Lockbox?

The first thought that visits any person who knows about the existence of 1password or KeePass: “why do you need a lockbox”?

In fact, it’s quite difficult to come up with a massive user experience for a new application from Firefox. Everything looks too specific: Lockbox is nailed to Firefox and syncs passwords only from it. Of course, when migrating to a PC from, for example, Chrome to FF, the latter’s built-in tools allow you to pull out all logs and passwords from the Google browser, but what next?

It is likely that the main task of Lockbox is to make life easier for existing Firefox users on PCs and laptops in terms of UX on mobile devices. We know that FF for mobile devices is at least specific , and the choice of the browser on the same Android-smartphone users pay much less attention than when working through a full-fledged station in the form of a PC or laptop. The main use of Lockbox is as follows: “if you are working on a PC via Firefox, you will not need to think about remembering passwords and manually typing on a mobile device, just roll out the Lockbox” .

The decision is at least controversial. Firefox Lockbox is just a crutch, laying between the browser on a PC and mobile devices that will make life of an already existing user base easier, but absolutely useless in attracting new users, because Chrome has a G-account that does not need passwords. Of the benefits, only AES-256-GCM encryption, onepw protocol and the use of PBKDF2 and HKDF can be distinguished.

At the same time, in the description of the application in Google Play and appStore it is indicated that the required Android version is 7.0 and higher, and iOS - 11.0 and higher, that is, only modern devices that have entered the market in the last few years fall under the target Firefox Lockbox audience. To call such an approach to development not too far-sighted is not to say anything. With an ever decreasing share of the browser market, the development team simply cut off all those who use obsolete marketers, but still working devices. Yes, and the relevance of Lockbox raises a lot of questions when there are more hardcore alternatives on the market for at least a decade.