3 ms·

Show HN: Alzheimer password generator

15 points by viralpoetry 8y ago

celticninja 8y ago
Could probably do with renaming, plenty of other memory based words that could be used rather than using Alzheimer's which is a terrible disease to be afflicted with.
- willio58 8y ago
  Yep, recently went through a year watching someone close deteriorate from a productive, happy, caring woman into a scared, confused, and lost being.
- gmemstr 8y ago
  I second this, and I don't really know if a memory-deficient password manager is a _good_ thing. > Final password is cryptographically derived from web page URL address, salt and user provided secret passphrase. The salt should be stored physically, so you can recover it in the future. I didn't really know, at first glance, what this project accomplishes besides generating a random password, although looking through some of the screenshots it looks like passwords are _always_ generated on-page instead of storing an encrypted vault. A super cool idea, but I'd be curious what everyday use of it would look like, and since I don't use Chrome I can't really test it myself.
  - viralpoetry 8y ago
    Hi, author here. You are right, the password is generated on the fly using URL, unique seed and provided passphrase. The extension javascript is sandboxed from the webpage, so it is not possible to obtain the inputs to the PBKDFunction from the context of website. I have coded this for myself and using it more than 2 years. The only problems are with some dynamically created login forms, like new reddit login.
- viralpoetry 8y ago
  You are right, probably I should choose something less offensive, but I saw a different "Alzheimer" named project https://github.com/tpruzina/alzheimer https://github.com/tpruzina/alzheimer and as this password "manager" does not need to store passwords at all, I have used this one.
  - celticninja 8y ago
    Changing the name is easier now than later.
Sjoerd 8y ago
Such a thing is typically called a deterministic password manager. One problem with it is that you can't change the algorithm. If you want to change your PBKDF2 from 1000 to 5000 iterations, then you can't login anymore on any of the services where you used this tool to set the password. See also this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016132
deleted 8y ago
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modzu 8y ago
i love this! does that mean i have alzheimers??

15 points by viralpoetry 8y ago

Could probably do with renaming, plenty of other memory based words that could be used rather than using Alzheimer's which is a terrible disease to be afflicted with.

willio58 8y ago
Yep, recently went through a year watching someone close deteriorate from a productive, happy, caring woman into a scared, confused, and lost being.
gmemstr 8y ago
I second this, and I don't really know if a memory-deficient password manager is a _good_ thing. > Final password is cryptographically derived from web page URL address, salt and user provided secret passphrase. The salt should be stored physically, so you can recover it in the future. I didn't really know, at first glance, what this project accomplishes besides generating a random password, although looking through some of the screenshots it looks like passwords are _always_ generated on-page instead of storing an encrypted vault. A super cool idea, but I'd be curious what everyday use of it would look like, and since I don't use Chrome I can't really test it myself.
- viralpoetry 8y ago
  Hi, author here. You are right, the password is generated on the fly using URL, unique seed and provided passphrase. The extension javascript is sandboxed from the webpage, so it is not possible to obtain the inputs to the PBKDFunction from the context of website. I have coded this for myself and using it more than 2 years. The only problems are with some dynamically created login forms, like new reddit login.
viralpoetry 8y ago
You are right, probably I should choose something less offensive, but I saw a different "Alzheimer" named project https://github.com/tpruzina/alzheimer https://github.com/tpruzina/alzheimer and as this password "manager" does not need to store passwords at all, I have used this one.
- celticninja 8y ago
  Changing the name is easier now than later.

Sjoerd 8y ago

Such a thing is typically called a deterministic password manager. One problem with it is that you can't change the algorithm. If you want to change your PBKDF2 from 1000 to 5000 iterations, then you can't login anymore on any of the services where you used this tool to set the password. See also this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016132

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

modzu 8y ago

i love this! does that mean i have alzheimers??