BedazzlePass Help

Description

The program reinforces your passwords by hashing them.

You can't run at the same time more than one instance of the program.

Usage

Though there is no edit-box on the main window of the program, you can just type your password. The password may contain maximum 100 characters, and only letters, digits and underscore ("_"); you can use "Backspace" to delete the last character from the password. When you want to reinforce your password, press "Enter" and your typed password will be hashed and put in the clipboard.

If you want to put in the clipboard fewer characters then the hash normally has, press:

"Ctrl + Enter" = to put only 32 chars.
"Shift + Enter" = to put only 16 chars.
"Alt + Enter" = to put only 8 chars.

When you create a new password to encrypt something, you have to verify that you really remember your textual password. Therefore, you have to type and hash your password twice, each time pasting the generated hash in one of the password edit-boxes of the encryption program.

Later, when you only want to access what you previously encrypted with a hashed password, you only have to type your textual password once.

The caption of the main window (the text displayed in the title of the main window) displays the number of characters from the typed password. If there is a "*" character after the number, it means that when you start typing again, all existing characters are deleted before the new character is put in the password; this is the equivalent of having selected all characters from an edit-box, just before typing.

After you hash your textual password, a hint is displayed below the window, hint that shows important information: the signature of the hash, the hashing algorithm, the number of iterations, the biometric information and the salt of the hash. The signature of the hash is formed from two characters, the hexadecimal representation of the sum of all the bytes of the hashed password. If you want to verify this signature using the characters of the hashed password that are in the clipboard, remember to use groups of two characters for each integer you add to the sum.

Note: After the generated hash is copied to the clipboard, the content of the clipboard is read back in order to verify that it was properly written.

Note: When you generate a hash, all letters are converted to small letters.

Screen keyboard

The password may contain special characters that are representations of certain graphical symbols displayed in the screen keyboard. To use the screen keyboard, click the "KB" menu. The content of the password is loaded in the dialog. All the symbols that you click are put at the end of the password.

If you exit from this dialog by clicking "Cancel", all symbols are discarded. If you exit from this dialog by clicking "Okay", your password contains all clicked symbols.

Algorithm

Before generating the hash, BedazzlePass creates a text by concatenating the user's password, the biometric information, and the hash salt. This text is then converted to lower case characters.

The created text is then hashed once to create a binary block of data, which is then hashed "Hash iterations – 1" times. Then, the resulted binary data is converted to a hexadecimal text and copied to the clipboard.

This hash is the text that you should use as password for encryption programs because it is a heavily armored version of your textual password.

People who would attempt to find your textual password by using a dictionary attack on your encrypted data would need a lot more time than they would need if you would directly use your textual password to encrypt the data.

The character code of each symbol from the screen keyboard is calculated by adding 0x80 and the index of the symbol in the keyboard table (left to right, top to bottom, starting from 0).

Biometric information

This is a text that is intrinsic to the user. This text may be public because it mainly exists in order to thwart the pre-computing of hashes by crackers. Unlike the hash salt, this value personalizes the pre-computing to each user.

This text is displayed in order to allow the user set it once but not type it again every time he needs to use his password. However, since the user will not type it often, it is possible that he would forget it. Therefore, the text is always visible so that the user could easily remember it later.

This information is saved to and loaded from the program's options file. A hash (of 10 iterations) of this information is also stored in order to protect the biometric information from accidental alteration.

Hash salt

This is a text that is intrinsic to the program. This text is public because it only exists in order to thwart the pre-computing of hashes by crackers. This value personalizes the pre-computing of hashes to BedazzlePass, thus narrowing the usage of any precomputed hashes generated using the same hashing algorithms as BedazzlePass.

This text is implemented as an option. Periodically (for example, once every 10 years), a new value will be added to this option in order to force crackers to start again pre-computing hashes.

People who have already used an older value of this option will be able to use that value, but new users will start with the latest value.

Options

Hash algorithm

The algorithm used to generate a hash value.

Hash iterations

The number of iterations used to generate a hash value. Use the value 1 to generate a normal hash of the given text. The bigger this number is, the stronger your password (= the text which is hashed) is to brute force attacks. If you increase this number, do it only in steps to see what the processing speed would be for your computer.

Click the "Recommend" button to have the program recommend you the number of iterations you should use. This number is calculated so that the hashing takes one second (for your computer). Set the "Hash iterations" combo-box with the closest number.

Hash salt

The salt used to generate a hash value. A new value will be added once every few years, to this combo-box.

Biometric information

The biometric information of the user, used to generate a hash value.