szilardszaloki
commented
2 months ago Row 15 here — issue on Brave Community (reported by mlchatnoir):
- breaking commit in Brave: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/commit/f82ae5a3a6d581578519e30f37de7ef55da93108 (basically,
ReadPassword()was falsely assumed to return abool, whereas it returns aKWalletDBus::Error— and!ReadPassword()is not the same asReadPassword() != KWalletDBus::SUCCESS, sinceenum Error { SUCCESS = 0, CANNOT_CONTACT, CANNOT_READ };) - first went live with 1.51.106 on April 27, 2023 (
mlchatnoirreported it on April 30, 2023) - corresponding issue on GitHub: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/30147
- fixed via https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/18404 (uplifted into
1.51.x) - fix went live with 1.51.117 on May 15, 2023
mlchatnoiralso reported on May 18, 2023 that after an upgrade, passwords came back ✅
LaurenWags
bsclifton
Description
This issue is a continuation of a previous and ongoing issue that was recently closed. Previous issue description:
The issue itself is largely unchanged — users are seeing different data types in the browser "disappear" due to know discernible reason/intentional action taken by the user. This includes any kind of data held in the browser, as shown in the sheet linked above. While I believe that most of these cases are not due to user error/behavior, there are a few caveats where there are known reasons in which this occurs.
Known occurrences (will continue to add to this list)
Scenarios in which data loss is expected include:
Keychain deleted or inaccessible For macOS users, the secret used to encrypt/decrypt is stored in the macOS Keychain. If this Keychain gets deleted, permission is lost (rendering the Keychain inaccessible), or if the [user's] profile folder is moved to a new machine (which doesn't have that keychain), then the new machine will not be able to read the secret and decrypt the data and data loss would be expected.
Corrupted, deleted or moved
Local Statefile For Windows users, the secret key is stored in theLocal Statefile. If this file (or the entire profile folder) is copied and moved to a new machine, the new machine will be unable to decrypt the secret and a new key would be generated, resulting in data loss.Additionally, if the
Local Statefile is corrupted (or if this file is deleted) this will likely result in a loss of data as well, as the secret will not be able to be decrypted and a new key will be created.Troubleshooting Steps/Helpful information
At this time, troubleshooting and relevant information that users (or devs) can share on this is a bit scattered, so I will use this section to reorganize and highlight what information can help resolve this issue. For now, please refer to the "Actions users can take" section in the Community thread for basic troubleshooting and information gathering.
Additional troubleshooting:
Local State.badfile (Windows only): If yourLocal Statefile gets corrupted for any reason, it will move itself out of the way and change its name toLocal State.badand replace itself with a "fresh"Local Statefile (which, again, would present as a loss of data). You would be shown an error when launching into Brave:You can look for this in your
User datadirectory by going to%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Dataon your PC. There, you should see theLocal State.badand the newLocal State.This error might happen if you edited the
Local Statefile. It's in JSON format - you can try pasting theLocal State.badcontent into a JSON validator to ensure there isn't something wrong with the formatting. The encryption key will be stored under the JSON objectos_crypt. If you're up for some text editing, you can copy this node over from theLocal State.badinto the newLocal State.Steps to reproduce
N/A
Actual result
N/A
Expected result
Data stays safe and intact in browser
Reproduces how often
No steps to reproduce
Brave version (brave://version info)
Issue has been present since v1.50x up to the most recent release.
Channel information
Reproducibility
Miscellaneous information
No response