Hiding passwords in password file?

Hiding passwords in password file?

[Felix E. Klee]

Hi,

I store most of my passwords (though the really critical ones are only in my 
head) in a large file whose format is roughly as follows:
  <some-site-name>:
    login:    <some-login>
    password: <some-password>
    ...
  ...
Sometimes it happens that I need to look up a password while someone is 
looking over my shoulder. Often it is allright if he sees that particular 
password. However, I don't want to see him all the other passwords while 
browsing the file and only show the selected password, eg. by pressing 
certain keys.

Two solutions came into my mind so far:
1. Use some kind of data base approach like eg. forms mode (doesn't look
   like it's capable to do this, though). This would force me to change the
   format of the file but that's no big problem.
2. Use Rot13 on the passwords. That's not very secure but better than
   nothing. In standard EMACS, though, it only seems to be possible to Rot13
   a whole buffer and not a single selection but writing a simple function
   that does this shouldn't be a problem.

I'm using EMACS 21.2.

Any ideas?

Felix

Re: Hiding passwords in password file?

[Felix E. Klee]

Felix E. Klee wrote:
> 2. Use Rot13 on the passwords. That's not very secure but better than
>    nothing. In standard EMACS, though, it only seems to be possible to
>    Rot13 a whole buffer and not a single selection but writing a simple
>    function that does this shouldn't be a problem.

Here's something else that just came into my mind: XORing passwords with a 
certain string of characters upon keypress. This would be more secure than 
Rot13 provided that that the string is well hidden.

Felix

Re: Hiding passwords in password file?

[Kai Großjohann]

"Felix E. Klee" <felix.klee@inka.de> writes:

> Sometimes it happens that I need to look up a password while someone is 
> looking over my shoulder. Often it is allright if he sees that particular 
> password. However, I don't want to see him all the other passwords while 
> browsing the file and only show the selected password, eg. by pressing 
> certain keys.

You could put the file in outline mode and arrange it so that the
leaves are hidden when you enter the file.  Then you can use the
outline commands to show the relevant parts of the file.
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: Hiding passwords in password file?

[Jose A. Ortega Ruiz]

"Felix E. Klee" <felix.klee@inka.de> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I store most of my passwords (though the really critical ones are only in my 
> head) in a large file whose format is roughly as follows:
>   <some-site-name>:
>     login:    <some-login>
>     password: <some-password>
>     ...
>   ...

hi,

a simple way to tackle with this issue is to use outline mode, and
write

* <some-site-name>:
** login: <some-login>
** password: <some-password>

with

-*-mode: outline -*-

at the beginning of your password file [0]. add a hook so that, when
loadig the file, all tree are colapsed, and emacs will show you just
something like:

* <some-site-name>...

* <some-other-site-name>...

and so on. then, use C-c @ C-e on a site name to expand just that
site's info [1]

just an idea.

cheers,
jao


[0] if you don't like the '*', you can customize the prefix unix uses
for recognizing outline entries by changing the variable 'outline-regexp'
[1] google for outline-magic.el for an easierway of
expanding/colapsing entries using the TAB key

-- 
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. -Confucius,
philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)

Re: Hiding passwords in password file?

[Felix E. Klee]

Thanks for the suggestion of outline-mode. I tried it out and also tried 
outline-magic.el (a nice improvement). However, it's not perfect since 
isearch opens sections that are folded in. So if I'm looking eg. for my 
google groups password I might use isearch and type in g o o g l e. 
However, the first character, g, might open a section that I wanted to keep 
closed.

Felix

Re: Hiding passwords in password file?

[Lee Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Felix" == Felix E Klee <felix.klee@inka.de> writes:

    Felix> Thanks for the suggestion of outline-mode. I tried it out
    Felix> and also tried outline-magic.el (a nice
    Felix> improvement). However, it's not perfect since isearch opens
    Felix> sections that are folded in. So if I'm looking eg. for my
    Felix> google groups password I might use isearch and type in g o
    Felix> o g l e.  However, the first character, g, might open a
    Felix> section that I wanted to keep closed.

M-! grep ^login: the_large_file

to display a  list of possible login names.  You  can i-search in that
buffer.  After that,

M-! awk '/^login: felix/{print $0; ++a; next} /^password:/&&a {print $0; exit 0}' the_large_file


-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     李守敦(Big5)                    ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ) 

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee