PASSWORD PROTECTION
It is common to find people who save passwords in their
favorite browser, for convenience, laziness, etc. ... but the vast majority of
these people do not take into account the precautions that must be taken when
carrying out this action, in this small document will be shown why it is not
appropriate to save our passwords in the web browser and the different methods
and programs used to recover them.
I will start with the browser that dominates the market,
Internet Explorer,
apart from being the most insecure and attacked browser, is the one that
manages the worst handling of our stored passwords, it has no manager for them,
no master key to encode them many spyware steal. This information easily with
the risks to our security that this implies, in addition there are a large
number of applications that allow us to easily recover these
stored passwords.
The program is very simple, just by opening it shows us
in plain text all the passwords stored in Internet Explorer, it gives us the
possibility of saving them in different formats, in addition to this it can be
called from the command line and with some Parameters like / stext filename.txt
will automatically save all keys to a text file without us noticing, leaving
our passwords at the mercy of anyone.
Recommendations:
· Don't
use Internet Explorer, there are many better and safer alternatives.
If you want to continue using Internet Explorer DO NOT
SAVE YOUR PASSWORDS IN IT, use software to save your passwords such as LastPass,
which is safe and free.
I still have a great favorite among netizens, Mozilla
Firefox, although this browser is much more secure than Internet Explorer, in
its default configuration it also leaves our keys to anyone curious. It is only
necessary to go to Tools / Options / Security / Saved Passwords, so that anyone
with access to our machine can see our passwords.
There is also a small application that allows this task to
be carried out automatically. It can also work with parameters so it is easy to
create scripts that automate the task of save passwords in a text file without
raising suspicions.
Recommendations:
Unlike Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox does have a
password manager and in it there is an option called " Master Password
" if we activate this option our passwords will only be shown when we
enter that password that manages the others, to activate it we go to Tools /
Options / Security / and activate the option Use Master Password.
Another browser that has given a lot to talk about is
Google Chrome, but this one is not saved either.
Google Chrome also has a password manager, but unlike
Mozilla Firefox they have not implemented an option like the "master
key", therefore, any curious person who enters Options / Specifies / Show
Stored Passwords will be able to see our keys without complications.
There is also a software called ChromePass also from the
company Nirsoft that allows you to get the keys without many complications,
which works the same as the previous 2 and also works on the command line.
Recommendations:
Do you use Opera, Safari or any other browser? Check the
security options that the password manager of your browser has, if it has any
option such as «the master key» of Mozilla Firefox, activate it, if you do not
have it try not to save your keys in it, use specialized software for this
task, in internet there are many, free and very good.
Nobody is exempt from the theft of information, but it is
better not to leave the simple task to a malicious user by storing all our keys
in one place and without protection.
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