The current discussion in the Ubuntu forums is about a possible security hole in GNOME, specifically about GNOME registered users having their passwords appear as cleartext on the keyring. Not a bug, say its defenders, but the security concept behind the GNOME keyring.

KDE and GNOME developers drafted a secret storage API designed to be a common interface for desktop applications that need to store passwords and other confidential data.

"...As many know, Gentoo is about choice, and the default choice is to "opt-in". So if you install Gnome on Gentoo, you get a bare-bone Gnome experience, sometimes in stark contrast to what other distros do. So in order to level the playing field, I'll be writing about how to enable some of those cool features. Today's special : gnome-keyring's pam module...."

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.

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.

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.

Revelation is a password manager for the GNOME 2 desktop. It stores accounts and passwords in a single, secure place, and gives access to them through a user-friendly graphical interface.

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.