Password manager applet - more details

[Michael LeMay <lemaymd lemaymd com>]

Thanks for the encouragement.  Some of your questions are answered on a little webpage I threw together to help me organize my thoughts: http://lemaymd.com/main.php?frag=pwmng&title=Gnome%20Password%20Manager%20Applet  It's not a masterpiece, but it should give you a little better idea of what this is.  I am working through various bugs in the prototype applet right now, and it only has partial functionality.  However, I feel that it is fairly close to working, and I will post a download link to it as soon as I can.

Memory protection has certainly been on my mind, and I will check out GPG to see how they deal with it.  Unfortunately, there is little I will be able to do to protect a password once it is placed on the clipboard or into any Gnome widget.  Someone correct me if I'm overlooking something here...

 -- Michael

> I think this sounds like an extremely useful tool.

> I'll be very interested to hear more specifics around implementation and
> usage models, though: first, anything that stores passwords needs to be
> extra-careful when handling them: consider things like hardwired memory
> so it doesn't get swapped to disk, etc.  GPG has a lot of experience
> with these types of security issues.

> Second, what would the usage of such an applet be?  I guess you'd be
> able to enter a username or list a usernames (where "username" is
> generic; could be a web site or whatever) and it would show a password
> on the screen?  Or, put it into the clipboard?  Or...???

> I'm assuming you need a key of some kind to access the applet; would
> that be a ssh key?  Or a separate passphrase?  How often do you have to
> enter it--every time, once per session, some timeout?


> Just curious?