Single sign-on everywhere

July 02, 2007 at 09:35 PM | categories: python, security, linux | View Comments

Using a single password for every site you visit is really stupid. However, the alternative, making unique and secure passwords for every single site you visit can get tedious and unmanageable quickly.

A long while ago I started memorizing about 10 different passwords of various security levels, thinking that I can mitigate the risk by grouping similar sites together under one password. Memorizing 10 passwords really isn't that hard to do if you're dedicated.. but it still isn't that much smarter than a single password.

Then I started using KisKis, a Java application with which I could store all my passwords in an encrypted form. Although it's very secure and I liked it at first, it became really tedious to create a new entry every single time I made a new account somewhere and then to open the application up and look up the password every time I needed it. Add to that that I had to come up with a way of synchronizing my passwords on all of the machines I use - it became a real pain.

In about 2004, Firefox came along with the ability to store passwords in an encrypted form right inside your browser. What a godsend! Now I can make a new unique password for every site I visit and have the browser remember it for me.

However, I still have one problem. I use a lot of different computers and there is still no easy way to synchronize passwords between firefoxen on different machines.

A couple days ago I found this: PwdHash. PwdHash is a rather ingenious method for generating a unique, secure password for every single site you visit and yet the password is based on a function of a master password and the URL itself, so you don't even need to store the password, you can simply generate it whenever you need it. Almost magic really.

However, I still have a few security related issues with it. I think that it is likely there are websites out there that could implement a keystroke logger in JavaScript or even more likely in Macromedia flash. So the ideal solution for me is to have the same functionality outside of the browser completely. This isn't so bad when combined with Firefox's ability to cache passwords. To PwdHash's credit, the developers have gone to great lengths to make sure that PwdHash is secure, I'm just paranoid. It's my flaw, not theirs.

So here is my first stab at a PwdHash-like python application (Note that this is not compatible with PwdHash. I didn't want to have the temptation of using their software when I'm at some public terminal.) You can run this standalone on any unix like OS (I find it most convenient to have it long running inside of GNU Screen.)

How to run:
  • python site_pass.py
  • The first time it is run you have to create a master password
  • Now simply enter a URL (either a full URL like http://www.enigmacurry.com or simply enigmacurry.com)
  • It will generate an eight character password for you, now copy and paste that into your webbrowser and have firefox remember the password.
  • If you ever need to look up the password again, simply rerun the application, enter the URL, and you'll get the exact same password back again. Since it is a hash of your master password and the domain name you don't ever have to store the password (except in your browser for convenience). Just generate it again whenever you need it.
  • Do the same for all your other accounts and only look up your password again on other computers that have yet to cache the password

Now you'll never have to go through the process of "I forgot my password" again!

One word of caution however. Don't run this on your friend's box or any other place where you don't have full control of the root account. Your master password resides in memory and could be seen by root if he really wanted to.

Also, this is an alpha release (I wrote it in about an hour's time just today). Progressive.com, my car insurance doesn't like any punctuation in a password. If I find other sites that don't like the generated password I may have to modify the hashing function which would mean that any passwords created with this version would need to change to use a forthcoming version.

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