From previous incarnations of this thread on HN (I think the linkedin one...), I have learned to use SuperGenPass.

There are a few similar utilities, basically it hashes your password browser-side with the site domain. This allows you to maintain unique passwords on all different sites by memorizing a single "master password".

I have "don't care" relatively weak passwords, various mnemonics for stronger ones I want to remember, and a bash+python script that takes a hash of a memorized passphrase + site domain as a random number generator seed that spits out 64 "graph" and 64 "alnum" characters (and some helpful trimmings for common, ridiculous, "maximum length" of sent passwords (20, 12..) that get SHA1'd into 40 characters anyway). I typically just remember which combination I used for the site, and since each is unique I just let the browser store it if I don't care too much for the account. Before I started using my script, for some sites that were important but I visited maybe once a year at maximum I grabbed something off of http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/ and forgot it and then used the "forgot password" feature when I needed to log in some other time in the future.

Few things bug me more than sites that have a maxlength property on the registration password forms (that's longer than the form-width shows), but not on the login password form.

I wonder what hash nvidia uses? These days when they don't specify, I just assume sha1. I hope it's not md5.

The main problem with "password vaults" is (and this is a showstopper for me)

You have to download it before using ANYTHING

And if the machine is compromised, they will have your passwords either way

"hashes your password browser-side with the site domain"

Does this mean using the domain as a salt?

yes. and that's a problem.

It's only a problem if the secret key is compromised. (But that's a problem for pretty much everything, isn't it?)

are you sure? that makes it possible to use rainbow tables (rainbow tables per domain obviously, but still pretty bad). or am i missing something?

You wouldn't use rainbow tables for a scheme like using hash(secret phrase + domain) to generate personal passwords, you'd use a dictionary attack where domains are the words, followed by a brute-force technique (which you'd use if you lacked the secret key). If I know you use such a scheme and I learn your secret phrase, your email provider and bank account websites would be the first on my list. It becomes no more secure than using the same password on every site plus the domain name at the end. The benefit is that you never have to trust all those different websites with your secret phrase.

The parenthetical in my above comment calls back to a comment by some early giant in cryptology (I think). It's best to have all the details about your specific method of hiding data known publicly, with the secret key being the only private piece of information.

There's the cross-platform issue with that one. I need this everywhere.

I'm using KeePassX (Linux, Mac) and KeePassDroid, both open source (you can audit the code if you need to).

Both are compatible with KeePass (to some extent), that runs on Windows.

Basically you can use it (almost?) anywhere:

http://keepass.info/download.html

+1 for the valid suggestion. Though I still prefer have them physically and nowhere else.