How to store passwords?

[confusedtekguy]

Hi, I have tons of passwords that I've been storing on my palm pilot... Now I need to store them on my computer and maybe share them on the network, since we have a new admin and he needs to have access to those too. What application should I use for that? I use win2k and need something that would have high encription - incase my computer is hacked or someone gets access to the shared folder and downloads the file, they wouldnt be able to crack it. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[SamBones]

On my Palm I got Passwords Plus by DataViz. It's GREAT. It keeps them encrypted so if your Palm get's highjacked, your personal info and passwords can't be seen. It even holds credit card numbers, insurance info, and all kinds of other stuff you might want to protect.

As far as putting something on a share, you can just use a Word document. Word has a password feature that encrypts and protects the document. I don't know how strong it is, but that's probably the simplest solution.

Hope this helps.

 

[pansophic]

Word is not a bad option, but it is not particularly good for a number of reasons. Word uses and RC4 algorithm for encrypting, which would take a PIII 850 about 56 days to test every single password possible. But if you open the file in Word, it will write a temporary file to the disk, and it may contain the passwords in clear-text. Those files are easily recovered by someone with moderate computer skills.

You are probably better off using something like EFS (I don't recall if you can encrypt just a directory or have to do the entire disk) or PGP Disk. That way, the temporary file, which is generally in the same directory as the file that you are opening, is also stored in the encrypted partition. I'm assuming that you will not keeping them in your palm pilot any more?


pansophic

 

[confusedtekguy]

Thanks for the help guys, I thought about using Word, but decided not to use it, for same reasons panasophic suggested. Then again Word would sound like a good solution if I get the shared directory encrypted, where can I find more info on EFS and PGP?

 

[pansophic]

http://support.microsoft.com

for EFS or

http://www.pgp.com

or

http://www.pgpi.com

for PGP.


pansophic