Solving password/key security when 'The World is your Computer'

[Stef Walter <stef-list memberwebs com>]

Just in case anyone is thinking of the same issues.

A lot of discussion is going on along the lines of getting a user's
desktop unbound from a physical computer, and letting the user peruse
his/her settings, data from all over.

One issue is that of passwords and (private) encryption keys. It seems
it's poor security to let this data be stored on some server accessible
from anywhere and protected only by a password.

The idea is to store passwords and/or encryption keys on a removable
disk (such as a USB thumb drive) and allow our user to have them
available when it is inserted into a computer. [1]

Gnome Keyring already supports this for passwords, and by GNOME 2.22
should support SSH and other keys in this manner.

Obviously this isn't a solution for those with special security needs.
But those folks should be using a single machine anyway.

Cheers,
Stef Walter


[1] The machine needs to be free from malware or trojans. But that's the
case with any computer you entrust with access to our data (whether
stored online or not), passwords etc...