Failtence

About

Failtence is a text based password management tool for Linux. It requires perl and gpg packages which come standard with Linux distributions. (So, you really dont have to install these packages if you are using Red Hat, Fedora or CentOS Linux computers). Here are its features:

Passwords are never stored in clear text
It is recommended that passwords be generated from carefully chosen sentences
Sentences are never stored in clear text
Password Hints and account names (resource names) are stored in clear text
Makes use of GPG to save sensitive information to a single file that should be moved to a safe offline device.

Download

Latest version 0.1 Download failtence here

Using Failtence

Create an empty directory in your home directory called failtence
Download failtence script into this new directory
Change directory into this new directory

Creation Mode:
Run it
First time it is run, it will make you create seperate gpg keys. Use failtence@failtence as the email address during gpg key creation
Generate password sets
Once the script exits, move .safekeep file to a secure offline device
Save gpg private key passphrase seperately in another offline device away from the above device

Practice Mode:
Run the script again. If passwords.txt file is found, it will automatically start up in practice mode
Practice password sets you have created by correctly typing appropriate passwords.

Failtence now created password.txt and .safekeep files. Passwords and Password Sentences are saved in encrypted form in .safekeep file. Backup this file to an offline device and delete it on the computer immediately! The other file passwords.txt only contains one-way hashes of Passwords and Password Sentences.

Tips for choosing Password Sets:

Each Password consists of Account Name (Resource ID), Password Sentence, Password and Password Hint. Your login name may be included in Account Name (Resource ID). Password Sentence is a sentence you have chosen from which password is derived in some way that you remember. Password Hint is something that reminds you of the Password Sentence, how password is derived from this sentence and the password itself.

Example:

Account Name: My checking acct at World Bank, joeshmoe12
Password Sentence: Japanese people love their Hello Kitties?
Password: YpltHKrc0de
Password Hint: money japan

Here, Account Name is a descriptive statement that tells me what this password set is about. Note that this includes my login name joeshmoe12. This is not required and entirely upto me. Password Sentence is some sentence I have carefully chosen making sure it has a punctuation / special char or a number as well as upper/lower case letters. Password is derived in this case by mapping Japanese to Y (for Yen, japanese money), '?' to rc0de (for $?, return code) and including first letters of the words in the middle of the Password Sentence. Finally, Password Hint is 'money japan' which reminds me of the Password Sentence, how I constructed Password and finally the Password.

Sharing Passwords

It is bad idea to share your passwords with anyone and you should never share your passwords. But if you absolutely have to share passwords, share Password Hint instead of sharing password. For example, if you have to share your email account password or Wireless router password with your trusted partner, give the partner the Password Hint or write it down on a piece of paper. Of course, this will only work if you and your partner together worked on creating the Password Set (when you first ran failtence script).

Recovering lost passwords

Lets say you are hit with Alzheimers or just plain laziness and you never ran failtence in practice mode to practice the passwords you have created. Now, you are stuck. You dont know the password and Password Hint does not make any sense. To recover your passwords in plain text, load the .safekeep file from offline device and decrypt it using your gpg keys. After each recovery, I recommend that you delete all files and start over fresh with failtence (i.e. recreate all new Password Sets)

Future enhancements

Create a LiveCD that boots the computer with bare minimum Linux, perl, gpg and failtence. The user can then use the script or recover lost passwords from external device
Use seeded SHA-1 or SHA-2 with 512 bits instead of MD5 hashing

Screen Shots

Running failtence for the first time

GPG Key creation process

Creating two Password Sets

Practice Mode

Password Sets are stored in password.txt file

The .safekeep file contains recoverable encrypted info. Save this on a USB thumb drive off-line and delete it immediately!

Other Info

Failtence tool is licensed under GNU General Public License. For questions or concerns about this program, contact me.