Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

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CHAPTER 8 LEOPARD SECURITY
NOTE Cryptography and encryption are very big, complicated topics. A great book that does
a good job of explaining them, including keys and certificates, is Cryptography Decrypted, by
H. X. Mel and Doris Baker (Addison-Wesley Professional, 2000).
Double-clicking any of the items in your keychain will open up a window providing detailed
information about that item. For items like passwords and secure notes, some details will be hidden,
specifically the password and the actual content of the note.
The password items have a number of options spread out over two tabs: the Attributes tab
and the Access Control tab.
The Attributes tab (Figure 8-3) provides the following information:
Name: This is just the name of the keychain item.
Kind: This is the category the item belongs to.
Account: This is the name associated with the account. Usually this field contains the
username, but occasionally, especially for application passwords, it is used to represent
something used similarly by the application.
Location: This identifies where the password is valid; this is commonly a URI pointing
to the online resource for which the item is valid, but occasionally it is something else
(a protocol, for example, or just something that has meaning to an application).
Comments: This field contains any comments associated with the item.
Password: This is where the password is shown. However, by default it is empty to protect
the password. To view the password, you will need to select the View Password option and
then authenticate yourself.
Figure 8-3. The Attributes tab of a password keychain item
NOTE All of the fields in the Attributes tab are editable. If you are storing items here for your
own reference, you may certainly edit these—however, if the item is being used by an application,
altering this information may interfere with the normal operation of the application.
The Access Control tab (Figure 8-4) allows you to delegate what applications can access the
keychain item, and whether or not you’ll be prompted to approve any new application that
wishes to use the information.