Enforcing password security with a multiple-user system can be a hassle — users all too often use inadequate passwords. john-the-ripper (also available via most distros) is a password-cracking tool that enables the identification of vulnerable passwords before someone with nefarious intentions finds the weakness.

So what do you do when you're brain reaches critical mass for passwords? Simple, you let a single application store and encrypt them for you so all you need is a single password to access all of those crucial passwords.

For pidgin users, there is a security issue regarding storing passwords in pidgin, so this program stores the passwords in archives .xml in clear text without any encryption. So any one can easily boot into recovery mode while you are away and find all your passwords in plain text. Then he can just copy the password files and opps he will got all the passwords easy way.

It is good practice to use a different password for each Web site you need to log in to. Good passwords tend to be long and contain a wide selection of characters. That can make remembering all your passwords difficult. But you can make things easier on yourself by storing passwords for various Web sites in an encrypted file on your computer.

Secure password storage is a big thing these days, particularly with the (good!) advice of not re-using passwords in more than one place. The thinking behind that is that if someone figures out a password for one service or Web site, they will not be able to re-use that password on other sites and further obtain access to your credentials and services.

An analysis of ... passwords revealed some interesting facts about the types of passwords people use when creating accounts at web sites. The most popular ones were "123456" and "password"... Lets look at the types of password problems I've seen and what you can do make yours safer without a lot of hassle.

Better delete your passwords from Firefox's Password Manager before next week's Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. That's when Jeremiah Grossman will present a demo showcasing how Javascript can be used to collect passwords from Firefox.

This multi-part article (1 of 12) looks at several utilities, programs, and commands to make password management (creating secure passwords, storing secure passwords, remembering secure passwords) on Linux easy. It also covers some cross-platform and portable applications.

This is part 2 of the article "The Ultimate Linux Password Management Guide" and will show you how to use keepassx for managing collections of complex passwords. Part 1 talks about the importance of complex passwords, several utilities and methods of creating complex passwords, and also lists some of the software we will review for managing complex passwords.