Keeping Track of Passwords

We've covered how to pick a good password but it's really doubtful you only have use for a single password.  Using the same password for everything you need to log in to isn't safe either.  You need to have a different password for each.  I bet you're thinking, "There's no way I can remember all those passwords."  Guess what, you don't have to.  There are plenty of programs out there, usually referred to as password safes to do it for you.  We'll go over one such program, KeePass for Windows, and then I'll point you to similar programs for Linux and Macs.  They also have password safes for most smart phones too.

Let's quickly cover what a password safe is.  A password safe is a program that holds all your usernames and passwords in a secure file.  You choose one good strong password to unlock this file and then the program keeps track of the rest of them.  Most password safes also have the ability to generate secure passwords for you.  You tell it how long you want it, what kinds of characters it contains, and the program does its thing and pops out a password for you.  Most of them can also fill in your login information for you for most programs and websites.  When you're filling out your username and password info, you also tell the program the website's address and title.  Then, when you go to that page, you hit a key combination (what the combination is depends on the program), the password safe looks up the title, find the username and password, and types it in for you.  You do have to have the password safe program running and unlocked for this to work though.  Now, let's look at one such program.

KeePass


KeePass is a free password safe for Windows.  It allows you to store all of your passwords, generates secure passwords, and fills them in for you.  After installing the program you will need to make a new database file.  Go to File --> New... create the file.  It will ask you for a "master" password, this is the one password you will have to remember and it should be very secure.  It is the key to getting to all your other passwords.  Don't worry about a "key file," we'll get to that at a later time.  Under the box where you type your password, you will notice a colored bar that goes from orange to green.  This is an indicator of the strength of your password.  The greener the bar, the better your password.  Don't worry if you don't get it to go all the way green, as long as you followed my tips on choosing a good password, you should be okay.  It may not be strong enough to protect a nuclear device but i'd hope you'd know how to choose really secure passwords if you're in charge of a nuclear weapon.

Confirm the master password in the next window and click OK.  Now you have your database and you can start entering passwords.  Click the "add Entry" button as show below to enter a new password.

This will open the Add Entry window.  In the picture below I have input the information for Facebook.  Don't put the "*s" in your username, those are just there to protect my account.

Once you have all your information filled out, click OK.  Do this for each of your accounts.  This is a great time to change your passwords to something a bit more secure.  Either come up with something on your own or have KeePass do it for you.  To do this, click on the little key with a star button as indicated above.  One thing to note, when copying your password from KeePass to the site/application to update it, make sure to button with three blue dots to show your password before you copy it.  That way you don't set your password as a bunch of asterisks.

After you have all of your passwords saved, go to any of your sites you log in to, such as Facebook.  make sure KeePass is running and push <Left Ctrl><Left Alt>+L together.  This will insert your username and password and press enter for you.  Tada!

Before you exit out of KeePass, you have to save your file.  Click File-->Save and choose a file name.  Make sure you don't put this in a public folder.  While your passwords are  safe because the file is encrypted, you don't want anyone accidentally deleting it.

For those wanting to understand some of the other options KeePass has to offer, LifeHacker has a nice guide.

Other Password Safes


There are password safe applications for pretty much every operating system.  KeePass is also available for most phones including iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and PalmOS, Linux has KeePassX which is very similar to KeePass, and 1Password is available for Mac OS X, but it'll run you $39.95.

As we rely more and more on passwords to protect the growing number of accounts we use everyday, choosing a poor password can have serious repercussions.  Now you can have a different, secure password for each account without running the risk or forgetting them or writing them down where someone can find them.

Is there an application or system that you use to keep track of your passwords?  Tell us about it in the comments.

Vault picture by Deep silence (Own work) GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Choosing Good Passwords

While there are a lot of authentication technologies available to the average consumer, usernames and passwords are still the most common form.  This is why you needs to choose good passwords.  But what is a good password?  To start, anything that is easily guessed, which means anything in a dictionary, is not a good password.  A modern home computer can go through all the words in a dictionary in a matter of minutes.  Other things to avoid are birth dates, social security numbers, phone numbers, and names.

Okay, now that you know what not to use as a password, what should you use?  A good password should be memorable, a minimum of 10 characters in length, and consist of numbers, special characters (&%$_, etc.), and both upper- and lowercase letters.

Let me guess, you're wondering how you're going to remember a password with all those numbers and special characters in it, right?  Here's one way.  Think of a phrase, it could be a favorite quote, bible passage, song lyrics, whatever.  For this example I'm going to go with."'Treat your password like your toothbrush.  Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.'  ~Clifford Stoll."  Now take the first letter of every word,

TYPLYT.DLAEUI,AGANOESM.~CS  

Now lets change some of those letters to similar looking numbers

7YP1Y7.D1A3UI,AGAN03SM.~CS  (BTW, the "O" was changed out for a zero)

Some of the other letters can be switched out with special characters,

7YP1Y7.D1@3U|,@G@N03$M.~C$

And finally, lets have every other letter left be lowercase,

7Yp1Y7.d1@3U|,@g@N03$m.~C$)

Now you have a password containing each of the required characters and we can remember it, which, as I stated when we first started out, is the definition of a good password.

Do you have a trick for choosing secure passwords?  Tell us about it in the comments.

Padlock picture by Garretttaggs (Own work) CC-BY-SA-3.0  or GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons