The five password managers they analyzed are LastPass, RoboForm, My1Login, PasswordBox and NeedMyPassword, and they did it to evaluate their security in practice, and to provide pointers to “guide the design of current and future password managers.”

“Widespread adoption of insecure password managers could make things worse: adding a new, untested single point of failure to the web authentication ecosystem. After all, a vulnerability in a password manager could allow an attacker to steal all passwords for a user in a single swoop,” they pointed out, and are advocating a defense-in-depth approach.

via Critical vulnerabilities in web-based password managers found.