How does a web browser save passwords?

Posted by marcus on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by marcus
Published on 2012-03-25T05:18:08Z Indexed on 2012/03/25 5:38 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 246

Filed under:

encryption

|

passwords

|

hashing

How do current web browsers (or mobile mail clients and any software in general) save user passwords? All answers about storing passwords say we should store only hashes, not the password themselves. But I'm having a hard time searching the web trying to find the best techniques to store passwords when we know we will need them in plain text later on — without storing them in plain text, without using a weak encryption (known key) and without asking the user for a master password. Any ideas?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about encryption

SQL SERVER – History of SQL Server Database Encryption

as seen on SQL Authority - Search for 'SQL Authority'
I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in… >>> More
Encryption is hard: AES encryption to Hex

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
So, I've got an app at work that encrypts a string using ColdFusion. ColdFusion's bulit-in encryption helpers make it pretty simple: encrypt('string_to_encrypt','key','AES','HEX') What I'm trying to do is use Ruby to create the same encrypted string as this ColdFusion script is creating. Unfortunately… >>> More
Confused about encryption with public and private keys (which to use for encryption)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am making a licensing system when clients ask my server for a license and I send them a license if they are permitted to have one. On my current system I encrypt the license using a single private key and have the public key embedded into the client application that they use to decrypt the license… >>> More
Encryption Product Keys : Public and Private key encryption

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to generate and validate product keys and have been thinking about using a public/private key system. I generate our product keys based on a client name (which could be a variable length string) a 6 digit serial number. It would be good if the product key would be of a manageable length… >>> More
Software tools to automatically decrypt a file, whose encryption algorithm (and/or encryption keys)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have an idea for encryption that I could program fairly easily to encrypt some local text file. Given that my approach is novel, and does not use any of the industry standard encryption techniques, would I be able to test the strength of my encryption using 'cracker' apps or suchlike? Or do all… >>> More

Related posts about passwords

Fixing /etc/shadow with md5 passwords to sha512 passwords

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I recently upgraded an ubuntu server with many users to a recent version from a version from 2008. The server used to use md5 password hashes (e.g., the shadow passwords began with $1$) and now is configured to use sha512. I'd prefer to keep using sha512, but would like the old users to be able… >>> More
How to securely generate memorable passwords?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Whenever I need new passwords I use some tools to generate those, preferable memorable passwords, but I've been wondering how secure this might actually be. Using The xkcd random number generator is probably pretty bad, cat /dev/random is probably pretty good, but generating memorable passwords seems… >>> More
Gawker Passwords

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
There has been much news about the hack of the Gawker web sites. There has even been an analysis of the common passwords found. This list is embarrassing in many ways. The most common password was "123456". The second most common password was "password". Much has also been written providing… >>> More
Phishing Ploy Forces Twitter to Reset Passwords

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
The microblogging site has reset some Twitter users' passwords after a phishing attack attempted to steal their login information. >>> More
Phishing Ploy Forces Twitter to Reset Passwords

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
The microblogging site has reset some Twitter users' passwords after a phishing attack attempted to steal their login information. >>> More