The difficulty in keeping up with your passwords can seem a daunting task so for this post I wanted to share a great, free, open source program to use to do just that. The program is called KeePass.
So, what is KeePass? From their site…
“KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).”
I’ve been using this program for the last few years and love it. It is a native Microsoft Windows program but others have ported it to a multitude of operating systems including MacOSX, Palm, WindowCE, PocketPC, Linux, Blackberry and more. So what this means is, you set-up one master password linked to this one file. You share this encrypted file among all your systems (including your smart phone) and you have all your usernames, passwords and associated websites all at your fingertips. Neat, huh?
I’m very much looking forward to their 2.0 release which is currently in beta. The added features (like sharing a password database and having it sync and merge changes) look like they could be a big help.
Find KeePass for Windows here and its Mac version here.
Posted under Information/Advisories
This post was written by Aaron on January 7, 2009
