DicePassword

DicePassword is a Password Manager, a relatively new genre of software application that helps people to manage and secure their on-line activities and behaviours using strong passwords. The primary purpose of a Password Manager is to allow users to use different and complex passwords for each of their online relationships without having to remember them. Just one 'master password' unlocks all of the others. The advantage is that users gain the advantage of excellent security with minimum effort.

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Because one password unlocks them all, password managers must have extremely good security. Imagine if their security was weak, wouldn't the hackers have a field day!? For this reason, you may assume that all Password Managers have extremely good security with good quality cryptography and storage services. Because of this most password managers have other privacy-related features that will be useful to most or some people and DicePassword is no exception.

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DicePassword has the following major features:

• Create strong passwords in various ways

• Organise different kinds of account, shopping, emails etc.

• Create relationships with other users and communicate with them privately

• Manage Christmas card lists for label printing (seriously, other people's private data does not belong to you to share with others, and in particular, criminals)

• Credit Card details

• Government-issued identification (Passport number, Driving License, Tax code, National Insurance number, National Health number etc. (information you may forget, mislay or not have ready when on a telephone call for instance)

• Others as they come to mind or are requested

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Technologies:

• Symmetric and asymmetric encryption (AES and RSA}

• Digital signatures (RSA)

• Timestamping (Home grown for now)

• Hashing algorithms (various according to need)

• Diffie Hellman key agreement (Elliptic Curve)

• Cloud Storage services (Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS)

• Microsoft Azure Service Bus for inter-user notifications

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Current status:

DicePassword is still under development and is not (and may never be) generally available for public use. The product is a demonstrator for the underlying technology that may be of interest to industry partners/academics in due course.

In it's current form (it has not undergone any stringent testing) it cannot be claimed that DicePassword is ready for real world use and anyone who is inspired to use a Password Manager as a result of reading this should perform a search for 'password manager' in their favourite browser. I have no commercial arrangement with any of the players in this field and will benefit from your engagement with any of them only by becoming very happy.

I will, however, be asking for a small number of people to volunteer to help with functional testing and for improving the User Experience.

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So why am I doing this?

It is arguable that most people have very bad 'password hygiene', and often for very good reasons: passwords that can be remembered can usually be hacked and if you have more than five websites that you regularly visit it will be difficult to have a personal password policy where each password can easily be remembered. DicePassword serves as a useful platform to discuss password management and to educate people who are unaware of how criminals discover their passwords. There is no simple answer and there is no answer that requires zero effort or expense. If you fall into my category of "bad managers of passwords" you need to reset your entire way of thinking about it.

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