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Episode: 1096
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Title: HPR1096: KeepassX
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1096/hpr1096.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-17 18:52:41
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---
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Hello, this is Frank Bell. I'm back to talk about Key Pass X. That's Kuro, Echo, Echo, Papa, Alpha,
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Sierra, Sierra, X-ray. Key Pass X is a cross-platform password vault. It works on limits and a number
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of other mixed platforms as well as Mac and Windows and is distinguished by having portable databases.
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It started as an attempt to implement the key pass that's Kuro, Echo, Echo, Papa, Alpha,
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Sierra, Sierra, Key Pass, password protocol for our Linux and was originally called Key Pass Slash L.
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Key Pass is a free open source GPL password manager available for Windows, iPhones and iPads,
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and supported in certain mix operating systems so long as you have mono installed. There'll be a link
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to the Key Pass website in the show notes. However, without mono, Key Pass will not work in Linux.
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Key Pass X has a native Linux application. After Key Pass L was operable, the program was ported to Mac
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and to Windows at which time the name was changed from Key Pass Slash L to Key Pass X. Key Pass X
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is compatible with Key Pass format databases up through Key Pass version 1.x.
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Key Pass is currently in the version 2.x series of releases. Work is being done to update Key Pass X
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to be compatible with the new Key Pass database format. I started using this when I did a bit of work
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for a company which had a great emphasis on password security. Seeing a password written down
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would cause great consternation to their IT department. So they recommended strongly using Key Pass X.
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They favored that because of the cross-platform nature. They had a mix of Linux and Windows computers
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in their infrastructure. If you've got a sign to a new computer, you can simply port your Key Pass
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X database to the new computer and with the same password that you were using before
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be able to open the database. Accordingly, you could have many, many passwords. Some of the people
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this company had up to 50 passwords and the only password that you had to actually remember
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was the password for your Key Pass X database. I got interested in using this at home
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because I have a Windows computer that I use from time to time and several Linux computers
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that I use regularly and remembering the passwords that I moved from one computer to another
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was quite the pain. I would expend lots of energy and trying to come up with passwords
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which could be obscure to another person but easy for me to remember because I was using
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pass phrases that had a meaning to me but would have no meaning to anyone else.
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I like it because it's cross-platform because I no longer need to remember the passwords
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or keep any kind of record of them and either files tucked away in secure corners of my computers
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or written records which I do not hesitate to do when I'm at home because if I've got the bad guy
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in my office reading my password list, I have security problems that greatly transcend
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internet password security problems. You can get this in sources from the Key Pass X website
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and a number of Linux distributions have it in their repos. I checked and it is in the repos
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for Debian, Fedora and SalesOS. There's also a Slack build for it and I'll have a link to the
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Slack build in the show notes and at the Key Pass X website you can download Windows and Mac
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binaries. Installing it is fairly simple install it from the repos or compile it from sources
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or from Mac and Windows run the installation binary. Once you install it and start the application
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you're looking at an empty interface. When you click on file new database you're prompted
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to enter and verify a password which is referred to as a master key in the interface.
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You may also use a key file for a combination of a key file and a password to secure your database.
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Once you've created the database the interface will people itself on the left there be a narrow panel
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that says groups with 2D file groups internet and email. The groups themselves are empty and are
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there for use. If you choose to use them later I'll talk about them more a little later
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and on the right in a much larger window there's a place for creating your entries. To add an
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entry you can go on the menu to entry, add new or you can right click in the empty entry
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field and get a pop-up menu and add new world won't be one of the options there. Other options
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when you click entries or right click in the entry field include clone, edit, copy the URL,
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open the URL in the default browser, copy username, copy password. When you click to add a new entry
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the add entry fields include group, title, username, URL, password, there is a quality indicator scale
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a place for comments and a place to set an expiry date. None of these fields are mandatory.
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I have created fields that have only a password in them. At a minimum you would want a title
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and the password because without the title you're not going to know what the password is for.
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I generally have the title, the URL, if it's one that I don't use so frequently I have it almost
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memorized the username and the password. Once you have the entry set up the way you would use it is
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to navigate to the log-on box for the resource that you want to log into. You can do that either
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using the copy URL and pasting the URL into your browser, the open URL if you want to use your default
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browser or simply navigating to the page the way you normally would. Let's ask Linus questions
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you would go to the lq item in your key pass x application. Highlight the line for lq right click
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and select copy username, paste that into the username box, repeat for copy password and bang-bang-boom
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URL as opposed to URL. One thing I've noticed is that the clipboard content seemed to expire after
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about 15 seconds. The contents for your password or your username are not held on the clipboard
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indefinitely. Even if you don't paste them into a web dialogue they will go away. Another feature
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that I quite like is the password generation feature. The way you would use this is to create a
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database entry, give it a title in other words and then in the entry next to the password line select
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gen for generate. When the generator starts there are three tabs one for random passwords, one for
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pronounceable passwords and really don't believe them when they say pronounceable and one for
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special passwords and in the last one the special tab you can prescribe what characters you
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want to use in the password. In each one of those three tabs dialogues allow you to establish
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some criteria such as whether or not to use special characters the length of the passwords
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and so on. Generally I like to use this because it takes the pressure off of me for coming up with
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difficult to crack passwords. In using the password generator I have found one thing useful.
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It is possible with key pass x to copy the password from the key pass x entry and then paste it
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into a text editor. I will do this frequently and I'll tell you why. I was setting up a password
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for some site a couple of weeks ago and I went to password generate the password and key pass x.
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I generated a really nice password. I tried to enter it and I got a message back saying a
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slash is not permitted. So I pasted the password into a text editor. I took out the slash,
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copy the revised password, missing the slash and used that to create the password at this site.
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That was accepted. Then I took the content of my text editor, went back and entered it into key
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pass x overwriting the previous password entry and then I tested it once more logging out and then
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logging into the site before I closed the text editor. Just in case I had managed the ball something
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up. So I would recommend taking advantage of that pasting feature. The ability to paste into
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a text editor is also useful if you need to share your password. For example at this company where
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I learned about key pass x, the company had a general password for logging into one of their vendor
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sites. All the employees of the company were to use this password if they were authorized to log
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into the vendor site. So if someone knew needed that password, you could give it to them simply by
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pasting it into a text file and that way showing them what the password they should use is.
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Because you can paste the passwords into a text file, if you are using key pass x in a public
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location and by public I mean where other people can see your computer, I don't mean just
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something like an internet coffee shop. This would also be at a work location. If you leave
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your computer, you definitely want to lock the screen or close key pass x so someone can't
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sneak in behind you and get your passwords like that. A couple of other things I want to mention
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under file database settings you can change the generation algorithm between two fish and
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AES. The default is AES. There will be a link about that in the show notes. You can export your key pass x
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database and text or XML. I have not tested this but it is an option on the menu. You can import
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databases and key pass x formats, PW manager format and I did work out PW manager. There is a
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site on source forage. It seems to be a star open source password manager project. The last
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post on the site that I found on source forage is six years old. There will be a link in the show
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notes and in k wallet format. I do want to mention here. I have experimented with GNOME key ring
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and k wallet and I wasn't particularly entranced with either one of them. I am certain that both of them
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are quite secure but there was not the convenience of the cross platform portability
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as you get with peak key pass x. If I'm using Slackware with KDE on one computer and devian with
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GNOME on the other it's really a pain to try to coordinate the two different password vaults.
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So I never really became entranced with either GNOME key ring or K wallet for reasons of my own
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personal computing habits. I also had never wanted to use a browser based password vault.
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I use multiple browsers. I generally use Opera but I also will use Firefox from time to time
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and sometimes other browsers depending on what I'm testing and what I'm trying to accomplish
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and what computer I'm sitting at. So again there is the portability issue and also
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and it may be completely irrational but storing my passwords in my browser it just seemed to be
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one step too close to the internet for me to be comfortable. I think I would rather have them in
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a wall safe back there somewhere and not sitting in the umbrella stand at the front door.
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I didn't mention the groups earlier. There are two default groups that appear in the left-hand
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groups panel when you first create a key pass x database. They are internet and email. If you
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change entry say you enter a new password the old entry gets preserved in the backup group
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which gets created at that time. Nothing is put in a group unless you tell key pass x to put it
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in a group. Generally for most of my browsing I do not use groups. I don't have that many passwords
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but if I had a lot of passwords or passwords that had special meanings and special uses then
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I might use groups. I'm doing some work for maintaining a database for an organization. I'm a
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member of one of my computers. I did take the passwords for their website and website-related
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logins and put them in a discrete group under the name of that organization so I could quickly
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find them. But for a day-to-day computing for the home computing user the groups is probably a
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feature that won't really be necessary. You cannot open two databases in one instance
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of key pass x but you can run multiple instances of key pass x. If I got one key pass x file open
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and key pass x and I go to file open. If I open a different one it will close the one I have.
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So if I need to have two key pass x files such as one for this organization I'm talking about
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the one that I gave to their people after I changed a number of insecure passwords and
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my own key pass x database. I simply start a second instance of key pass x
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load in the other database and they can quite happily run side by side. You can also change your
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default browser. And the key pass x that I got from Slack builds the default browser was
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Firefox. To change the browser you would go to extras settings advanced custom browser command
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and simply type in the command to start the browser of your choice. In my case I simply replace
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the word Firefox with the word opera. Bingo when I click to open a URL the URL opened in opera
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rather than starting a Firefox instance when I did not necessarily want to be running two browsers.
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So that's an introduction to key pass x. One other thing I do when I save a new key pass x
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database I make some revisions I add some new passwords I change some passwords and I do
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the save as and I give it today's date. That's not because I'm trying to maintain
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a personal archive of all my old passwords that I don't use anymore. That's so when I then
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SCP this new database to my other computers or in the case of my Windows computer use my network
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to move it over there. I know which database is the current one I can open that then I can
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delete the old ones. So I have found this a useful rule program is made my life a lot easier
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particularly because of the cross platform nature of it. I likely just about the time I finished
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the notes for this podcast and was preparing to record it. I noticed that Linux journal had
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posted an article about key pass x along to that article will be in the show notes.
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Everybody have fun enjoy your summer's computing and I'll catch you later.
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If you want to email me you can email me at frank at pineviewfarm.net pineviewfarm is all
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one word, no spaces, no punctuation and my website is www.pineviewfarm.net. Thank you very much.
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