Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

CHAPTER 8 LEOPARD SECURITY 147
Figure 8-4. The Access Control tab controls how the information in the item can be accessed.
Creating Your Own Keychains and Keychain Items
While the keychain feature is designed to mostly run in the background to seamlessly manage
passwords, keys, and certificates, it will also allow you to store your own information inside of
it. You could store your own passwords and notes, and even keep track of serial numbers for registered
applications.
NOTE Besides using the keychain, there are other ways to securely store password and application
data provided by third parties. Some interesting applications include Pastor
(www.mehlau.net/pastor/) and info.xhead (www.xheadsoftware.com/info_xhead.asp), which are
both nice stand-alone applications for securely storing password and registration data.
To add a keychain item, you click the little + button at the bottom of the keychain window,
and a sheet will open so you can enter your information. By default, the sheet will be geared
toward passwords. If you a want to create a note, select the Note group in the left column, and
then click the + button. This will open up a sheet for entering your note. Alternately, you can
select File ➤ New Password Item or File ➤ New Secure Note Item directly from the menu bar.
The password sheet (Figure 8-5) is fairly straightforward; you enter a name for your item,
the account name, and your password. There are some interesting points here, though. For one,
the keychain item name determines what the type of item will be. If you enter a URL, the item
will be created as an Internet password; otherwise the item will be created as an application password.
Finally, the bar at the bottom will extend to the right and change from red to green as you
enter your password to indicate its strength.
The strength of a password is determined by common means that a malicious user may use
to attempt to crack it. This determination consists of many variables, including the length of the
password, uniqueness, and the type of characters used. Common names and words found in dictionaries
are very weak, as a modern computer can run through a dictionary list of common
words and passwords in a few minutes. Beyond that, short passwords take a relatively short
amount of time to crack using brute force methods (which basically means using every possible
combination of every letter, number, and symbol for each space). The difficulty of brute-force
cracking increases dramatically with each additional character. It’s good practice to attempt to
mix uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and if possible, symbols, into your passwords.
Additionally, passwords should be at least eight characters long.