Password encryption

[Luke Schierer]

David Balazic wrote:
> Yes, but hiding it still has a purpose.
> 
> Imagine this:
>  - you open the config file in editor (for whatever purpose)
>  - someone walks by and sees your stored password
> 
> A good and simple way to avoid this is:
>  - pidgin creates a secret key and stores it by itself into a file
>  - all stored passwords are encrypted in the config file(s) with this
> key
> 
> This prevents the above scenario.
> And works.
> 
> Regards,
> David


Okay, so now the password is fully available to the local admin in the 
earlier example, but with one down side: now the user won't realize that 
it is fully accessible to the local admin, but will instead think he or 
she is secure.

As I said in the the wiki page explaining our view of this, in the rare 
case that you open your accounts.xml file in a text editor, you can 
determine how much of a breach of security has occurred.  You can weigh 
the risk of someone having seen your password (and recognizing what 
account it is for, that it is a password, and so on in the mess of xml 
that is in your screen) against the potential benefits of being able to 
recover a password (say you don't remember it and need to enter it into 
the client you chose to use instead of pidgin.  Or say you need to fill 
it into a form on a webpage to change it.  Or a variety of other 
possibilities such as adding that account to a new instance of pidgin on 
a different computer).

No one in this thread has yet come up with a scenario that materially 
differs from any that has come up in previous instances of this 
discussion, at least some of which are in the mailing list archives.

Unless you can come up with something truly novel that throws the entire 
discussion into an entirely new light, I see no benefit to obscuring the 
passwords that is not outweighed, in the minds of those who would commit 
this code, by the problems that security by obscurity create.

luke


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