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My suggestion would be to use the OS keychain facilities, so the master password would be the same as the one used to log in. The master password is only needed
by andreasvc 13y ago
My suggestion would be to use the OS keychain facilities, so the master password would be the same as the one used to log in. The master password is only needed once to decrypt the passwords, but I'm suggesting that for the 'show passwords' functionality the browser should insist on asking the password again. The advantage is that on disk, passwords are not stored in plaintext, and the browser doesn't reveal passwords trivially. A determined attacker could still extract the encryption key from a memory dump, but that's on a completely different level from a "show passwords" button.
- makomk 13y agoChrome already uses the OS keychain facilities. People are complaining that this is insecure because unauthorized people can look at the saved passwords if the user leaves their computer logged in and unlocked. They want Chrome to adopt the Firefox approach of storing them directly on disk optionally encrypted with a master password.
- andreasvc 13y agoOr the Safari approach, where even though it could show you the passwords directly, its policy is to ask for your password before doing so. Note that while Chrome uses the keychain, it actually circumvents the point of the keychain by decrypting all keys at startup, before they're needed.