Ode to KeePass
Best password managers 2019 they say(2021), and they say similar things too, but they are not even mentioning the best program I’ve discovered years ago that’s still evolving.
There are so many password managers out there: LastPass / Dashlane / 1Password/Bitwarden… Just because it became critical to have various difficult passwords linked to variety of resources. The mentioned programs are just making your life more secure => your hair becomes way softer and shinier!
But.. The main problem with almost all that popular password managers is that they are: closed source and almost all of them are web related, you have to believe that they store everything securely, have normal security policies in the organizations and are bulletproof to wild hackers. Some of them have even password rotation features (so that their service authorizes to specific websites, changes there the passwords and saves the changed ones in your storage, without even noticing you), scary and pleasant at the same time!
I needed the ultimate solution to store all the secret information securely without loosing much of the feature sets of the mentioned programs. And my choice is: KeePass! The thing is really uglier than any of the competitors, but its almost all the time in system tray + has hotkeys, so you rarely see it. Let me mention the strong points; we can discuss them in the related to this channel’s chat. Just closely look at their feature list, but here are my favorites:
1. Open sourced and free. The development is community based there is no single company, who controls everything. The program does not save anything on some remote servers. Sure there is some team that maintains deployment/website/hosting. You can donate a beer for their work.
2. The storage is yours: the passwords’ database is local. You can set the encryption parameters yourself from the available options.
3. You can use any cloud provider for DB synchronization between devices.
4. Devices I’ve said?… Yeap: clients on any OS. ANY.
5. Master password for blocking (with specific “system” lock screen on windows and other security related features so that noone can stalk it)/ Key file/ Windows user account — just choose the way you want to use to open the database.
6. Can fill data in ANY window (uses titles for that, so can be used in consoles too). Sure you can use hotkey press to fill that…
7. Can automatically lock on triggers, such as: computer lock/time of inactivity/….
8. Has portable version! Super useful to have it on your thumb-drive too!
9. Can store attachments: so you can add your top secret documents along with some passwords / super top secret phrases.
10. Secure windows clipboard with auto-clean option (similar function in other OS-es as well).
11. Super fast native clients on any platform (Windows/Linux/Android tested). With great search abilities (you can customize searching parameters for index).
12. Plugins. Oh variety of them. Not all of them normally written, but who restricts YOU to try to fix that problem? ;) (personal favorites for now are: Yet Another Favicon Downloader, KeeTrayTOTP)
13. You can create second database, open it in same program (tab will appear) and share it among your work/family members via any cloud storage. So we can say that it has some kind of shared-family-passwords/secrets feature.
14. For gods sake again: it can be used in ANY program: secure(manages to bypass keyloggers by mixing the input) auto-fill in SSH/Consoles is so000o tasty!
So.. One small and great program KeePass. Give it a try and maybe mention your favorite password manager in the comments? Just USE any password manager. This will make differences, the grass will become greener, people around kinder and so on… ^_^
