Password Manager

[abberration]

Version 1.1: Dec 15, 2022

Hello, everyone!

I have been using this program for 6 months now and have added features, worked with making it more user friendly and making sure there are no bugs. I quite like how it has turned out. In my time, I discovered that I prefer sorting my list of websites A-Z instead of arranging them myself (user defined still available). I added a feature that allows you to minimize the program and not have to type the password to restore it for a few minutes (having to type it many times in one session became tiresome). You get to choose to have it prompt for password after 2, 5, or 10 minutes of being minimized (or every time or never prompt). 

I hope you like it as much as I do!

 

Original description:

I have wanted to create my own password manager for a while now. I finally did it and got it working pretty much how I envisioned it. It is portable and uses Windows' Crypt32.dll, which made it's debut with Windows XP SP3, so that is the minimum you need for this script to work. Also, if you want to use the feature to export your data to Excel, you must have that installed on your system or VM.

The zip folder includes a help file, which you can move to any subfolder where the script is located. If you choose to have no help file, clicking on the Help section in the menu will bring up an online version from Google Docs. 

It does save data to an INI file in the same directory as the script, so it does need read/write access to that. 

The help file explains everything and the program is so user friendly, you probably won't even need to read it. The one thing that isn't obvious is when you have a list of items, to move them up/down in the list, hold down the CTRL button and press the up or down arrow. 

Hope everyone likes it!

 

 

Password_Manager_V._1.1.zip

Edited December 15, 2022 by abberration
New version 1.1 uploaded!

[Tancrede]

Thank you very much. 👍

[kurtykurtyboy]

Neat app! And seems to be well thought out.

You didn't ask for suggestions, but I'll give you some for free. 😁

• add accelerator keys for adding (Insert) and deleting (Del) items.
• maybe it's just my laptop screen, but the 8.5 font is a little hard to see/focus.
• when editing an item, hit enter to save and close the popup.

[abberration]

Hi kurtykurtyboy,

I'm always open for suggestions. Your suggestions are great and will absolutely look into them. 

Adding accelerator keys for adding/deleting items would not be a problem. Perhaps I would make the shortcut keys selectable by the the user.

In my testing, the 8.5 font looked fine, but I did not test on different hardware (only tested with VMs). I am glad you mentioned this, so I will absolutely find a solution, even if it means not setting a non-standard font/size. Again, I might be able to make this somewhat user selectable.

I actually chose to not allow hitting enter on forms with passwords because people often hit enter out of habit and I didn't want someone doing that and setting a password by mistake and locking them out of their data. I now realize the mistake on that form was one that I made! I didn't include a confirm password field, which I included on all other forms where you set passwords. Adding the confirmation field will allow hitting enter save the form because of the password matching safeguard. And I could do this for the other forms that set passwords, as well. 

 

On a side note, I recently read two unrelated posts that made me think about two more changes that I might consider making:

1. One post mentioned the limitations of ASCII vs ANSI, in regards to foreign characters and saving them to an INI. This would be important for non-English keyboards (thus, non-English users). 

2. A post mentioned how after creating the decryption key, you should destroy the key as soon as possible. I would like to do this, but that would mean having to enter your main password every time you copied a username or password and it would make this program annoying. Having a decryption key in memory might not be considered safe, but I doubt that very many snoopers would have the skills to do anything with it (or even know it exists). I will think about possible solutions to make it more secure.

 

Again, thank your for your suggestions. They were all good ones.  I do appreciate them!

[kurtykurtyboy]

I found your point #2 intriguing, so I looked into how other programs are doing it. It appears that most password programs are storing the keys in memory to varying degrees and their point of view is (like you said) if someone has that much access to your memory, you are already doomed. I think a good compromise is to always destroy the keys for each item when possible, but keep the master key open for a set amount of time of inactivity. After the program has been idle for a set amount of time, you must enter your password again to unlock it.

And piggy-backing off of that feature, you could add a menu item to manually lock the app if you are stepping away or you know you'll be done for a bit.

[abberration]

Hello, again. I do already have the option to require a password if the program is minimized. I can make it destroy the key when the program is minimized if the user has that option set. And your idea of manually locking the app after a certain amount of time is a good idea. I will look into it. In the changelog, the only future idea I had not yet found a solution to was clearing the clipboard after the user copies data into memory. My problem with delaying an action was finding a way instead of Sleep. Sleep basically pauses the program, so you cannot continue to use it. I tried the Timer functions, but was not successful - but I think that will be the solution. When I figure out how to delay an action properly, I it will be the answer to our concerns. 

But hey, it definitely beats my old password list, which was just a plain old text file. 

[abberration]

New version 1.1 available on the first post!

[MikePan]

It will show the password is incorrect. Please try again.

Any one meet the issue?

 

[abberration]

My best advice is to type your password in Notepad to make sure you are typing it correctly, your keyboard is not skipping any letters and the caps lock is not turned on. 

Has the program worked well until now? Are you using it on a different computer than before? Can you copy the files and try it on another computer? 

Basically, the only reasons I can think of why it would not work is if the encryption DLL built into Windows is not working or if you modified certain parts of the .ini file or the autoit script itself. Rebooting the computer would be worth trying.

If you have any details to add that could be affecting the program, it might help in troubleshooting.