Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed

Re:Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed by IsaacL on Monday April 11, 2011 @02:13AM (#2431608)

"And by the way, if after reading this you still wish to use a traditional password manager, I suggest that you put your passwords into a plain text file and encrypt it with GPG or use Password Safe."

Having recently had some significant trouble with a lost online banking password, I've been thinking about keeping all my passwords in an encrypted file stored in various places (I don't like the idea of using a password manager, because it's difficult to move it across platforms). Is this sensible from a security POV? Which is the best encryption to use and is there a standard *nix tool for it?

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Re:Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed by shin_lao on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:00AM (#2431717)

You can use keepass which is open source and cross platform.

http://keepass.info/download.html

It's much more convenient than a text file you cipher and decipher and it's more secure as well. A text file is prone to error (wrong copy/paste, forgot to cipher the file, etc.)

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Re:Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed by strayer on Monday April 11, 2011 @04:43AM (#2431933)

> I don't like the idea of using a password manager, because it's difficult to move it across platforms

http://clipperz.com is a very portable password manager.

It works on your computer as well as online.

It relies on your browser being a "secure" Javascript interpreter. But then we do that every time we log into a web site.

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Re:Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed by troels on Monday April 11, 2011 @02:26AM (#2431635)

PGP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy) which GPG uses is the standard *nix tool for encryption.

Depending on your needs, you could also have a look at TrueCrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org/)

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