[TriLUG] Mozilla password annoyances

Owen Berry trilugbucket at berrybunch.net
Mon Mar 1 22:09:56 EST 2004


Following on the discussion of our passwords being broadcast across the
net for all to see ...

I've been using Mozilla/Firebird/Firefox for the last couple of months
to keep track of most of my passwords for web sites, well the less
sensitive ones, and have found it to be really useful in preventing
headaches from trying to remember too many useless bits of information.
However, every now and then Mozilla refuses to cooperate and you find
yourself jumping through all kinds of hoops trying to get passwords
reset or emailed (in the clear) back to you. Sometimes the problem is
that the URL or the names of the fields stored in the passwords file
have changed and you can simply hack the file, but every now and then
there is no cooperation from the browser and you're simply stuck.

>From Googling for resolutions to this headache I found that I was not
the only one suffering, and that some people also just wanted to be able
to retrieve all their passwords back out of the file for various
reasons, but I didn't find any resolutions.

Frustrated, I took a look at the Mozilla code and wrote a small C++
program to extract all that information back out and dump it to stdout
or a text file. Unencrypted data is decoded back from base 64 into
something legible, and encrypted data is decrypted back into plain text
(after you provide the master password).

The reason I'm rambling on about this is that I want to provide this
functionality to people out there who want to use it. It's a small
project, one file with about 300 lines of code, and is definitely not
worth a project on SourceForge or something similar. What is the best
way to get this out there? Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Owen





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