Managing passwords

[mrn]

I've just found out that our op's are storing all (root) passwords in a excel spreadsheet (Password protected, that's a laugh) on a network drive. As you can apprieciate I'm not pleased, but can see why they have done it. Has anyone come across a good password management system, thats easy to use but secure. If it were me it would be a paper copy in the fire safe, but this is not very accessable.

Regards

--
| Mike Nixon
| Unix Admin
|
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[JasonDeckard]

> If it were me it would be a paper copy in the fire safe, but this is not very accessable.



This is the correct answer, for the very reason you mentioned: it's not very accessible.

 

[sy5adm1n]

If thats the answer they gave, might try to at least put it on an internal web site, passworded and the web page itself set to root read only. We had a server farm and several sysads working it, since we had a sysad internal web site already, we just added the passworded site to it. More secure than a spread sheet. There are some encryption apps you could use also.

 

[rdapilmoto]

We use Solaris 8 in my shop...and a neat thing we do with passwords is to utilize the -x option with the "view" command. You can setup a file and list all your passwords in it and will only be able to view the file using the view -x command, since this will encrypt the file. Kinda neat...Thought I'd throw this out for you to consider.

Encryption option; when used, vi simulates the X command of ex and prompts the user for a key. This key is used to encrypt and decrypt text using the algorithm of the crypt command. The X command makes an educated guess to determine whether text read in is encrypted or not. The temporary buffer file is encrypted also, using a transformed version of the key typed in for the -x option. If an empty encryption key is entered (that is, if the return key is pressed right after the prompt), the file will not be encrypted. This is a good way to decrypt a file erroneously encrypted with a mistyped encryption key, such as a backspace or undo key.

Systems Analyst
HEB Grocery Company
San Antonio, Texas

 

[joeunixadmin]

Hi,

We've been using this for a couple of years and it works great!

http://www.counterpane.com/passsafe.html

Hope this helps!

-Joe