KeePass

This app saved my bacon again today. I keep forgetting to blog it as I've been using it for a few years now ever since Lenzpot told me about it. I swear I blog these cool little apps for myself sometimes so I can keep track of these little gems as I format my PC on a yearly basis to clean out the junk one accumulates over a year.

It's KeePass . It's a real lightweight password manager. It stores all your various site passwords in a single text which is opened up by a single master password file all encrypted up the wazoo with AES and Twofish and it's free and open source. In my opinion, all encryption proggies should be open source, just for transparency so you can see what they are doing. We wouldn't trust the government or some third party company would refuse to publish their encryption source code so we can see all the back doors they threw in would we? (Shhh, we do every day. Scary...)

So you start up a KeePass database, put in a website, or portal, or whatever and jot down your password for that site to store, or it can think one up for you. Heck, you don't even have to see what it is as it has the ability to do the login for you if it is open. The master file is portable, just as the keepass application is. You can chuck it on a memory stick, no install needed.

I accessed an old website that I hadn't used in a year today. What was the password again? Off to keepass - there it is. The only thing you have to do is remember the master one - and keep that one a secret.