KWallet integration - from the developer

[George Staikos]

On Thursday 04 September 2003 14:27, Tim Jansen wrote:
> On Thursday 04 September 2003 14:52, George Staikos wrote:
> > system.  The only big difference we have at this point is that we don't
> > reuse the system login password for the wallet password.  I think you can
> > agree with me that this is a bad idea for us to emulate.
>
> Why? I can see that it is difficult to implement, but for the user it is
> great.
> If the password's hash is secure (MD5 or similar) on the local system it
> should be no security problem to use it for encryption of passwords as
> well. If your account is not save, having a different password for KWallet
> does not help much anyway.

   If the hash of the password is used, then if someone steals a laptop, the 
wallet files on the laptop are effectively compromised.  It also makes it 
semantically difficult to implement sharing with a usb key or similar device 
(which already works).  If we grab the password in KDM, then it becomes KDM 
specific, and it leaves a huge security hole open IMHO.

> The advantage is that people who use a non-mobile computer at home have
> almost the same degree of security, but much more comfort. Forcing them to
> enter two passwords just encourages them to turn off password protection
> for KWallet, use empty/trivial passwords or similar ways around the
> problem.

   non-mobile home computers are becoming a smaller fraction of the pie.  
Hopefully in a few years they will actually be the minority anyways.

> (And it would also be a little bit safer than my current solution, an
> unencrypted plain text file that contains all my passwords)

   Hopefully it is on an encrypted partition. :-)

-- 
George Staikos
KDE Developer				http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.		http://www.staikos.net/