You may belong to a majority of netizens who have problems keeping tab of secure passwords for different on-line services, may it be web-based email, forum, blog, or whatever that requires you to enter your username and password. If you are like me, I keep at least four passwords that I rotate every so often. These are passwords that are easy to memorize but difficult to hack. If you want total security, however, it is best that you have a unique password for each site but that may be impossible to remember, right? Short of writing the passwords on a stick-it note, use a password vault. Duane Odom writes a command-line password vault hack for Linux.com. It may sound a bit boring because of the tool being command-line based, try it out first and see how nifty the tool is.
As an alternative, you may also use HashAPass – a web-based password generator. This is what I use since it comes with a Mac Dashboard widget. :P
I realise sometimes it’s fun to write code just to explore a problem. Especially in the areas of security and encryption, however, I think it’s especially valuable to look for standard utilities out there and see if they meet your needs. The chances are they’ve been scrutinized for vulns to a degree you’re own script never will be.