Password vault programs for Linux, Windows, Smartphones

[brendan-j2ZBMMpYpO5eoWH0uzbU5w at public.gmane.org (Brendan Kidwell)]

(Sorry for the repeat Jerry. Once again I forgot to Reply-To-All the first
time I sent it!)

Let me share my experience in the last year or two...

I decided to go all-out and generate a different, random password for
EVERYTHING. Trust no holders of your credentials not to leak them.

In the past I've used Password Gorilla, and then I migrated to ... something
else whose name I don't remember. I tried putting them in a notebook in an
encrypted filesystem < http://www.glump.net/howto/passwords_zim >. These
solutions all worked out quite well, except that there was no way to sync to
my Blackberry.

I then tried KeePass 2.x (.NET/Mono WinForms app) followed by KeePass
1.x/KeePassX.

The 2.x series of KeePass included a Java mobile app that is ported to many
platforms including BlackBerry. I did NOT use the BlackBerry desktop manager
app -- it's junk. Simply copying the password database (with the encryption
key shortened to accommodate the clunky BlackBerry keypad) to the
BlackBerry's storage via USB worked out perfectly well. I do not sync
bidirectionally; I push down to BlackBerry once a month or so. (If I wanted
to, I could put new entries from the BlackBerry in a "todo" category and
manually enter them upstream before pushing.)

In my experience, all desktop versions of KeePass and all BlackBerry ports
work fine with the system clipboard. Jerry I'm not sure why you seem to have
had a problem with it.

Two problems I had with 2.x:

1) It's a WinForms app and it doesn't work so well under Mono and X --
especially if you do not use GNOME or KDE environments. I was using the ion3
window manager for a while, and while everything else worked, KeePass 2.x
had a tendency to not draw text in certain controls. That's a bit of a
downer.

2) KeePass 2.x for BlackBerry uses more memory and processing time than
KeePass 1.x for Blackberry.

I found out that KeePass 1.x -- kinda like Apache 1.x for such a long time
-- will be supported for "the foreseeable future". And KeePassX, the X port
of KeePass 1.x, works perfectly on any desktop I try it on. The BlackBerry
port works fine.

The KeePass 2.x file format has more features than the 1.x file format, but
you'll find that pretty much all the CRITICAL features you need are
implemented in the old format. I don't really need custom-named fields -- I
dump things like "What's your cat's name? [random letters] What was your
wife's sister's childhood best friend's name? [random letters]" in the
Comment field.

If every account and every "security" question has a different random
password, it is absolutely essential that you 1) use a good encryption key,
2) don't forget the key (you won't if you use it every day) and 3) copy the
database off-site and keep it up-to-date.

Actually what I do is this:

1) Primary copy is stored at SDF (public access Unix) and I remotely mount
via SFTP (sshfs) whenever I want to view and edit the database.
2) I copy the primary file to a read-only cache in
~/etc/keys/cached/brendan.kdb (on every desktop) once in a while, in case I
need to access the database while I'm not online.
3) I copy the primary file to my BlackBerry once in a while and change the
key to something more manageable for the BlackBerry keypad.

Brendan Kidwell


On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> My requirements are:
> 1. Cross platform Android, Windows, and Linux.
> 2. Be able to syncronize the data bases. Storing the data base on the
> microSD would work since it is available when plugging in the Android.
> 3. In creating an entry I need to be able to cut and paste (If I recall
> I was not able to do this with either of the password managers I tried
> on Blackberry.
>
>