Zotero Connector conflicts with LastPass in Chrome

njones61

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that I could not edit passwords in my LastPass account in my Chrome browser. It works fine with Safari. I noticed this same problem on all of my computers (2 mac studio, 2 MacBook Air, and one Dell PC Workstation). I contacted LastPass and after about 10 days of trial and error, we traced it to the Zotero extension. If I turn off Zotero Connector, I can edit LastPass passwords just fine. I have been using both LastPass and Zotero for years.

adomasven

Could you be more specific what doesn't work with LastPass? Is it something on their website, or in their extension?

njones61

Sure. I have a large number of items in LastPass and LastPass provides a set of templates or categories for your data. Here are a few:

-Addresses
-Bank accounts
-Driver licences
-Passports
-Insurance policies
-Email accounts
etc.

But far and away the most highly used categories is "Passwords". Each password is a URL for a website, and the login credentials (user name and password). When you visit a website and go to log in, the LastPass Chrome extension automatically fills the user name and password for you.

When you open the LastPass interface, it provides a list of all of your items. There is a button each item to delete, share, or edit. If you click on the Edit button, it brings up the password record, allowing you to make changes, view the user name and password, or copy any of the items.

If I have the Zotero Connector installed, I can edit any of the other categories except for the Passwords (which is >95% of the database). If you click on the edit button, nothing happens. But if I turn off the Zotero Connector extension and refresh the LastPass browser page, I can edit them just fine.

adomasven

Google required us to switch to a new browser extension framework, which forces us to inject a hidden iframe onto all pages and that seems to be what's causing it to break. We are going to talk to Chrome team about improving the extension framework to allow us work in a way that does not require us to inject an iframe.

Technically its always an extension's fault when it breaks a page's functionality, but we have millions of users that have been running the new version of the extension since the beginning of June, and this is the first report, so most websites function fine. As such, you may try reporting this to LastPass and they could fix it on their end.

EDIT: We will be releasing a fix in the next version of the Connector for the LastPass vault.

Berkys

Thank you, hope to see a new version soon. Same problem here...

dstillman

@njones61, @Berkys: This should be fixed now in Zotero Connector 5.0.134.

njones61

That is wonderful. Thanks.