1.) I did not recommend security by obscurity, just obscurity for it's own sake 2.) security is provided by encryption (as I posted about 3 times today ;-)
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Luke Schierer > Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 4:51 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Password encryption > > 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 > > > _______________________________________________ Support mailing list [email protected] http://pidgin.im/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/support
