Re: Password Security and Distribution

[John Kinsella <jlk () thrashyour com>]

One of my guys found a package called Password Gorilla, which is
basically a GUI which sits on top of Password Safe that came out of
Counterpane in 2002 or so.  Either allows you to organize passwords by
group and machine, and the whole database is encrypted by blowfish:

http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/Gorilla/

One thing I've been thinking of from my managed service/consulting
background is to have a main database which has all users/passwords for
all "companies" in a central database (LAMP architecture), then depending
on what a user has access to, a custom Password Safe database is created
for them.  This would handle how to distribute password changes out to
admins who have varying levels of access.  Sounds like about a week's
worth of work - if people voiced enough interest or if somebody cared to
help me out, I'd finally get motivated to write it and put it up on
Sourceforge...

John

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 11:28:23AM -0500, McLean Pickett wrote:
> Jeremy -
>
> I've not found a better solution than PGP. Perhaps more a formalized
> process for communicating password updates proactively is all you need.
> Ideally, distributing passwords at 3am is too late.
>
> In the past I've used small password database programs on a network
> share. You are then left with verbal or PGP encrypted communications to
> distribute a single new password to access the database versus
> distributing all of the changed passwords. If you're interested try
> http://www.anypassword.com
>
> There are others who read this list that prefer distributing passwords
> on paper. You can't hack into a piece of paper :) and if you have
> physical access to the paper then you most likely have physical access
> to the network equipment as well...
>
> McLean
>  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu] On Behalf Of
> Jeremy Stinson
> Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 10:49 AM
> To: nanog () merit edu
> Subject: Password Security and Distribution
>
>
> All,
>
> Our company is starting to grow rather quickly and we are starting to
> have growing pains. We are in the need for a better mechanism for
> sharing passwords between our engineers. Most of these passwords are for
> our client's systems where some of them are controlling the password
> schemes (aka requiring shared user accounts). We have a process in which
> we change passwords every X days but, distributing these passwords to
> everyone who needs them is starting to become a challenge. Also, handing
> off passwords to someone who is stepping in to help out at 3am securely
> is not easy. I have tried to do google searches but I have not been able
> to find a good way or process to do this. I am wondering if anyone has
> any ideas on how to handle this?
>
> In other companies we have used a PGP keyring to secure a text file that
> contained all of these passwords and then put them onto a shared
> customer portal. The problem with this strategy is what happens if you
> are not on your computer where PGP is installed?
>
> Any suggestions will be welcomed.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Jeremy