If you got the automatic updates on the bitwarden clients, they will show an empty vault if you are selfhosting vaultwarden.
It seems to be an accidental bug in the bitwarden clients that are assuming that they’re talking with official servers
It’s fixed with the latest release of the vaultwarden server that was published a few minutes ago
Just did the update of vaultwarden. Had to log out and log back again in bitwarden on my browser. On the phone it seems to just have worked. Thank you for the PSA :)
Thanks so much for the PSA. I’m currently on vacation without any chance to update Vaultwarden but need access to it via the Bitwarden client. Just disabled the auto update in time. I wish I could vote this twice.
Enjoy your vacation! ~
i’m in shadowzone’s house right now and vaultwarden’s working great :3
I found this comment on what happened by dani-garcia, one of the main devs:
The short version is that around 8-ish years ago, Bitwarden changed the way the vault items were structured, and Vaultwarden added some backwards compatibility fields to ensure both old and new versions of the clients worked.
These backwards compatibility fields were supposed to be a temporary measure, but for at least the next three years the clients still required them, until we eventually forgot to keep track of them. At some point between 2021 and today, the clients stopped requiring these backwards compatibility fields, but Vaultwarden was still sending them.
This wasn’t a problem until Bitwarden decided to use the backwards compatibility fields in a completely different way, which caused the clients to crash.
Found here: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/discussions/7473
There’s a reason you don’t do things like that…
Apparently nobody in that software team has heard about Knight Capital. They reused a flag and that coupled with a deployment failure that only lasted ~45 minutes caused an over 400 million dollar loss nearly bankrupting the entire company. Ultimately they ended up combining with another company.
The immediate cause of the incident was a deployment failure that left one of eight servers running outdated code, creating an inconsistency in how the system interpreted incoming instructions. The new software reused a flag associated with a legacy function known as “Power Peg,” which had been disabled but not removed from the codebase, and on the unpatched server this flag activated obsolete logic that continuously generated child orders in response to parent orders that the system did not correctly recognize as already filled.
I hadn’t heard of this one before, thanks for posting.
Do not update any bitwarden client until you can update vaultwarden
If anyone’s Firefox auto updated like mine you can uninstall the extension, go to the Bitwarden extension page on the Firefox website and manually install the old version. Only needed if you can’t update vaultwarden right away.
Switching to Passbolt right now. I have the feeling this is the beginning of the enshitification of Bitwarden.
The mark of a quality developer is not the lack of problems, but the way they respond to them. Any project in active development for a long time is going to run into breaking issues from time to time just because technical debt accrues and memories are short.
The ability to fix a problem, publicly own up to the cause/fix and work to prevent future issues like it are the best we can ask for.
Such bugs have already appeared in the past. It’s only logical that this happens from time to time, as the creators of bitwarden don’t test the compatobility with 3rd party servers.
What is important is that they’re not deliberately blocking vaultwarden.
Passbolt pales in comparison. The fact I can only get the android app from google play. No thanks. That is a deal breaker right there. I am working towards moving 100% off from google play.
After quickly spinning up a container of it; it feels very unpolished and can’t say it will replace Bitwarden/Vaultwarden for me.
I’ve been leery about bitwarden client updates since the posts awhile back about the new(ish) PE/VC c suite person.
I’m not saying those are related in any way other than the fact that I intentionally haven’t updated my clients to the latest yet and for once it worked out for me :)
Its a lot of coincidences
As soon as that news came down I immediately went to my extension and turned off auto-updates. Glad I did now!
I do love docker + a front end like dockge.
Saw this post, switched to my browser, clicked three buttons; vaultwarden is now updated. Didn’t even move my lazy ass off the couch. (I’m on my phone)
Thanks for the PSA! :)
I love podman quadlets, I didn’t do anything and it updated itself 😁
I run watchtower on a cron schedule. It had already fired for today, so it wouldn’t have run again until tomorrow. I could have waited, but manual is just as easy.
Be aware that watchtowerr is not updated anymore and due to the nature of having access to the socket is a security risk.
That’s one of the joys of FOSS, when the dev for a popular project can’t continue; there’s often someone willing to pick up the torch and carry it forward.
I switched to this fork when the one you’re thinking of ended development.
https://github.com/nicholas-fedor/watchtower
Last update 3 days ago.
I was looking for a simple solution like that, thank you kind stranger!
Noticed that as well with our selfhosted instance at work and wondered what the deal was.
Guess I now know why.Ps. I notice your msn avatar. I’m busy with https://retromessenger.com. Coming soon for free!
Very nice, I even considered using escargot to patch the old clients but then realized it’s not a great idea security wise
Yeah escargot just doesn’t do it for me. I want to keep using the existing chat network I use daily. But just giving back the MSN vibes.
I created it using gtk4. So it’s cross platform as well. Meaning Linux native. Which I also wanted.
Would love this to work with Signal and Matrix!
Yah that’s possible. I just implemented telegram for now. But depending on the open api like matrix should work for sure as well. Has signal also an open client api?
Thanks for the PSA, I got hit before any of this was live
Thank you for this. I thought I was going insane. Time to turn auto updates off
Per the vault warden release notes:
We strongly advice to update as soon as possible.
With the vulnerabilities being patched these days, it seems ill asvised to disable automatic updates for something as critical as a password manager.
it seems ill asvised to disable automatic updates
I use the WatchTower fork for now, but I use it with the run once flag:
volumes: - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock command: --run-once --cleanupSo, when an update is available, I’ll delay updating until I am rather comfortable that all the early adopters have worked out all the bugs for me. LOL Thanks guys! You’re an invaluable service.
The packaged Debian version did not get updated yet.
“Accidental” — you are far more trusting than I
If you check the github discussion from the devs that patched the issue it doesn’t seem intentional to me (not an expert). That being said I assumed the same thing.
My browser auto updated the extension at a very inopportune time and from some reason KDE connect from my phone to computer which is usually very reliable also wouldn’t connect. Was quite annoying until I realized I can just log into the vaultwarden website directly. I don’t think I’ve done that in years
Lmao there it is
