Common personal password management software

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The Internet is now fully integrated into our daily lives. An ordinary person is exposed to the Internet every day. login passwords for various network services and software are very important to each of us, if the password is stolen, you can imagine the consequences. In the personal password security policy article, moonlight blog details how network users should use and configure their personal passwords, but this also brings about a real problem of memorizing passwords.

I pointed out in my password security policy that users should use different user names and passwords for different types of websites. If the number of websites accessed by users is very large, there will be dozens or even hundreds of passwords to be remembered. password management software is required to remember and manage dozens of different passwords.

Password management software is a security management application designed to manage account and password. It helps you remember the account and password in the webpage and application logon window. It supports automatic filling of account and password and one-click logon, this eliminates the hassle of memorizing a large number of passwords and entering the account password manually.

There are many common password management techniques. I will introduce them one by one.

Notepad tools

There are many methods for password management. The simplest one is to write the password to a notepad file, and then you can use a synchronization tool like Dropbox to synchronize the password to multiple computers and mobile devices, in the same way, you can also put it on a cloud notebook such as Evernote and use its own method for synchronization. This password management method is the simplest and dangerous, because the password is saved in plaintext, once a hacker gains the password file or loses the laptop, the user will lose all the account and password, which is highly risky.

Save your own password in the browser

Chrome and Firefox support the synchronization function of saving the password. You can save the username and password you have logged on to. You only need to select the password and do not need to enter it again. After setting browser data synchronization, you can restore the original password even after reinstalling the system. You do not need to manually enter the user name and password every time, which is very convenient to use, excellent in ease of use.

However, the password manager provided by chrome and Firefox is relatively simple. If hackers remotely control or intrude into users' computers, they can obtain the plaintext password, which is very insecure. Although Firefox can set a "primary password" to prevent plaintext password viewing, after setting "primary password", the ease of use of password entry is greatly reduced. At the same time, the browser can only record one user name and password for the same website.

Therefore, for the browser to save the password, the main policy of password protection is to prevent the user's computer from being attacked.

Online Password Management Service

In online password management, passwords are stored on the cloud (server), which solves the security problem of the Local Computer and changes password protection to password server protection.

Lastpass is the most famous cloud password management service. It supports mainstream browsers such as chrome, Firefox and IE, as well as mobile devices such as iPhone, Android, and blackberry, and Google authenticator (Google
Authenticator) to import existing accounts and passwords in the browser to the lastpass database.

When you log on, the browser plug-in of lastpass will automatically fill in the information required for logon and automatically log on. It supports logon for different user names of the same site, which is very convenient to use.

Lastpass has excellent compatibility, ease of use, and security. It provides a free version. The only problem is how secure the lastpass website is. As a cloud-based online password management service, lastpass saves the password on the Internet, and the password protection is changed to password protection for lastpass. If the lastpass website has a vulnerability or the user's lastpass password is broken, the password protection for lastpass will become invalid, the user may still lose all plaintext passwords.

Therefore, for users, it is strongly recommended to bind Google authenticator to the lastpass. After binding, even if the user's lastpass password is stolen, there will be no user's mobile phone or password-protected mailbox, hackers cannot log on to the lastpass website.

Open-source password management software

Although online password management looks cool, many people are not at ease. They prefer to store and manage passwords locally. Currently, some common local password management software is available, among them, the most well-known is the open-source password protection software keepass.

Keepass uses a local database to manage passwords, and the software uses the 256-bit AES algorithm to encrypt the password database. Theoretically, it is difficult to crack the password. In this way, even if the password database is stolen due to computer loss or hacker intrusion, it is difficult for hackers to decrypt the plaintext account and password information.

Keepass is an open-source software that does not require installation in green and supports many functions, including import and export, third-party plug-ins, and Chinese interfaces. It uses two INS: chromeipass and keepasshttp, chrome can be used to enter the keepass Database Password.

Keepass cannot directly import the password of the Chrome browser. You must first use the chromepass software to export the chrome password to the CSV format, and then import the CSV file from keepass.

In addition to free open-source software, there are also some paid commercial password management software, such as 1 Password, roboform, and so on. These commercial software provides a 30-day free trial, and you need to pay for it after the expiration time.

Summary

For the management of a large number of accounts and passwords, a password management software is required. From the perspective of cross-platform and ease of use, lastpass is a professional account and password management software, which is easy to use and convenient for security, it is highly available and practical than other software. However, the main drawback of lastpass is that users must trust the security of lastpass, and network attacks may mainly target the cloud's lastpass. Once the lastpass website is broken, the user password may be leaked. Keepass is very powerful for managing local passwords, but its ease of use is relatively poor. It is easy to save your own passwords, but its security is poor.

In general, for example, it is best to keep the most core passwords such as email and online banking in your own brain. Some other websites with low importance passwords can use the above password management tools, this reduces the burden on users to remember a large number of passwords and ensures the security of users' online access.