38518 - saving everything, except password

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Form Manager, enhancement, P3)

Description

[André Langhorst]

What about saving everything except the password. Currently there are only the
options to save everything or nothing. But if I think it´s insecure to save both
password und username, mozilla could save everything except input fields with
type=password - an additional button or a small checkbox would be fine.

Comment 1

[Stephen P. Morse]

It's not insecure if you use encryption.  Whether or not to use encryption is a 
choice that is up to the user.

And why are you more concerned about the security of password fields than about 
a non-password input field for your credit-card number or your social security 
number?

Comment 2

[Blake Ross]

agreed

Comment 3

[André Langhorst]

agreed too :) my thought was, that I´ve to enter user/password combinations at
many sites, me, I´m remembering most of the passwords without writing them down,
I just have to look for the correct user IDs and Names...

Comment 4

[Stephen P. Morse]

From Andre's last comment, it sounds like there's a confusion here between 
autofill (a.k.a. wallet) and single-signon (a.k.a. password manager).  This bug 
was filed against wallet but from his last comment I think he is referring to 
single signon.  In which case my comments about the social-security and 
credit-card fields won't apply but my comment about encryption is still 
applicable.

For the record, here are the major difference between wallet and single-signon:

Single signon saves data for a particular form and prefills that form when the 
site is revisited in the future.  It does not prefill those values on a form 
from any other site.  Wallet saves generic data from one site and attempts to 
prefill it on forms that it encounters from other sites.

Single signon is active -- whenever you submit a form a pop-up appears asking if 
you want to save the values, and when you visit a site you automatically get the 
values prefilled for you.  Wallet is passive -- you have to give an explicit 
command to capture the values and another explicit command to have values 
prefilled for you.

Comment 5

[André Langhorst]

You´re right, I touhgt of the password manager (I never used the wallet, and I
think I´ll never use it (revisist-opionen: 30 days) - but single signon enters
both public (user ID etc) and private data (passwords etc.), a nice feature
would be if I could decide only to fill out those forms completely where no
sensitive data is submitted / I´m mainly concerned about the local security,
when non-password field with credit-card number would be expected to enter I
wouldn´t enter, but the local security is important, if a) computers are shared
OR b) if someone looses his notebook :( OR c) somebody has acces to your
computer (eg. in a firm) event it´s your own notebook  - the win2000 password
shouldn´t hinder anybody to enter win2000 and I don´t know how the passwords are
stored internally in mozilla, mozilla didn´t prompt me to enter my master
password for weeks now, isn´t there a master password anymore?
Summary: If I do not want my password stored on disk (neither encrypted nor
text) and I do not want to enter the usernames etc. again and again I (think) I
can´t simplify my work with mozilla...

Comment 6

[Stephen P. Morse]

Again, encryption should alleviate your fears.

Let me tell you what the status of encryption is, and why you haven't needed a 
master password for the last few weeks.  Previously we didn't have strong 
encryption -- we simply XOR-ed the master password with the data.  A determined 
hacker could have cracked that and we knew it.  Our intention all along was to 
integrate with a true encryption mechanism.  We have such a mechanism in our 
cartman (a.k.a Personal Security Manager or PSM) module which we are now 
integrating with.  About two weeks ago I did all the restructuring to interface 
to PSM and therefore removed all the master-password management from my side of 
the interface; PSM will manage all that.  But PSM is not ready for prime-time 
yet and so temporarily does a dummy encryption which doesn't involve any master 
password.  That should change any day now.

Comment 7

[André Langhorst]

perhaps those (major) impacts should be reported somewhere, component owners
should post some warnings performing grave changes, I also don´t know why the
flash plugin does not work anymore and how to install java for mozilla (if
possible) after having seen that netscape beta came with jre13... I regulary
visit the status update page and I take a nightly build (almost) every day, do I
miss a news source?
To change this but from useless to almost useless, what about adding a checkbox
[ ] never prompt me again (entering my master password in this session),
currently the user is prompted only once, but leaving my workspace without
closing mozilla is usual, if I forget to lock the workstation a bad person could
sell/buy things on websites only secured with a onetime login (opening "view
stored passwords manager" - which could be secured with master password too)...

don´t think of me having fear of everything, but world becomes mobile and I´m
working with notebooks for years now and I think it´s important to be cautious

Comment 8

[Stephen P. Morse]

Your caution is certainly well founded.  Here are answers to some of your 
questions.

I did post this change when it occured.  It was sent out to the seamonkey 
mailing list which is also mirrored in a newsgroup.

There is a timeout on the master password.  I had originally implemented a fixed 
timeout of 30 minutes when this was under control of my module.  Now that the 
master password is handled by PSM, we use their facilities.  They have a timeout 
as well and the amount of time is even changeable by the user.  I had a logout 
feature allowing you lock your database without having to exit the browser.  
I've been told that PSM provides that as well.

Comment 9

[André Langhorst]

thx having so much endurance, hope PSM will satisfy everyones needs...