Keep Your Domain Information, Passwords, Program Set-ups and Registration Keys, Credit Card Information and Family Records (Insurance Policy Numbers, Bank Account Information, Lawyer Information) and General Information In A Password Encrypted Database That Doesn’t Break and Will Fit on a Thumb Drive. It is Totally Portable and Secure!

Over time, you’ll accumulate a number of user name and password combinations from participating in forums, maintaining email accounts, signing up for newsletters and installing software.

I’ve always had a difficult time keeping urls, user names and passwords straight. I’ve used MS Excel spreadsheets, an Access database, the “notes” feature in Outlook and even plain text files to keep track of email accounts, usernames and passwords. I know I’ve lost hundreds of hours trying to recover or restore that information after a hard disk crash or virus attack!

Excel spreadsheets can provide some level of security as you can password protect a spreadsheet which will prevent someome from viewing your password information. This will at least slow down a thief should your laptop be stolen. Note I said “slow down” because the thief could hand the laptop to his buddy who has a password extraction program and viola, your spreadsheet is now viewable (along with all your accounts, usernames and passwords.)

Keepass totally eliminates that problem and provides a number of features that make using it a pleasure.

First, and most important, Keepass encrypts the ENTIRE database. The encryption is so strong that the designers doubt that it could be cracked, even by a seasoned cryptologist.

Second, Keepass is portable. This may not sound like a big deal, but consider the following. The program and database are small enough to run from a USB drive. There’s NO installation program, no tinkering with the registry and no setup requirements! This makes two issues easy to deal with. First, backups are a snap. Second, you can move the entire program from one machine to another by simply copying it to a USB drive and plugging that drive into a new computer.

Third, and my reason for promoting Keepass, it DOES NOT break! I’ve had problems with corrupted spreadsheets and Outlook data files, but I never, ever had a problem with Keepass.

Fourth, it will transfer your username and password to the Windows clipboard so that you can copy the information into a web brower text box. For example, to log into a forum, load the forum in your web browser. Start up Keepass and go to the entry for that forum. Double click on your username and that information is transfered to the clipboad. Switch to the brower and either right-click and select paste or press control+V. After a few seconds Keepass automatically clears the Windows clipboard so that malware cannot copy the information!

Fifth, Keepass tracks expiration dates and provides reminders when things like domain names, insurance policies or membership periods are about to expire.

Sixth, you have the option of having Keepass available from the System Tray. This way it can act as pop-up when you browse the web. Very convenient indeed.

Keepass has a whole raft of other features (listed below) but these are my top six favorites.

Reasons you need to check out Keepass

Strong Security

• KeePass supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, Rijndael) and the Twofish algorithms to encrypt its password databases.
• Both of these ciphers are regarded as very secure by the cryptography community. Banks are using these algorithms for example, too.
• Even if you would use all computers in the world to attack one database, decrypting it would take longer than the age of the universe.
• Even quantum computers won’t help that much. The algorithms are symmetric so its complexity would be reduced a bit, anyway, the sun will go nova before you have decrypted the database.
• The complete database is encrypted, not only the password fields. So your usernames, notes, etc. are protected, too.
• SHA-256 is used as password hash. SHA-256 is a 256-bit cryptographically secure one-way hash function. Your master password is hashed using this algorithm and its output is used as key for the encryption algorithms.
• In contrast to many other hashing algorithms, no attacks are known yet against SHA-256.
• Protection against dictionary and guessing attacks: by transforming the final master key very often, dictionary and guessing attacks can be made harder.
• In-Memory Passwords Protection: Your passwords are encrypted while KeePass is running, so even if Windows caches the KeePass process to disk, this wouldn’t reveal your passwords anyway.
• [2.x] Protected In-Memory Streams: When loading the inner XML format, passwords are encrypted using a session key.
• Security-Enhanced Password Edit Controls: KeePass is the first password manager that features security-enhanced password edit controls. None of the available password edit control spies work against these controls. The passwords entered in those controls aren’t even visible in the process memory of KeePass.
• Also see the security information page.

Multiple User Keys

• One master password decrypts the complete database.
• Alternatively you can use key files. Key files provide better security than master passwords in most cases. You only have to carry the key file with you, for example on a floppy disk, USB stick, or you can burn it onto a CD. Of course, you shouldn’t lose this disk then.
• For even more security you can combine the above two methods: the database then requires the key file and the password in order to be unlocked. Even if you lose your key file, the database would remain secure.
• [2.x] Additionally, you can lock the database to the current Windows user account. The database can then only be opened by the same person who created it.
• Also see keys information page.

Portable and No Installation Required

• KeePass is portable: it can be carried on an USB stick and runs on Windows systems without being installed.
• Installer packages are available, too, for the ones who like to have shortcuts in their Windows start menu and on the desktop.
• KeePass doesn’t store anything on your system. The program doesn’t create any new registry keys and it doesn’t create any initialization files (INI) in your Windows directory. Deleting the KeePass directory (in case you downloaded the binary ZIP package) or using the uninstaller (in case you downloaded the installer package) leaves no trace of KeePass on your system.
• [1.x] KeePass runs, without downloading any additional libraries, on Windows 98, 98SE, ME, NT, 2000, XP (Home & Pro, 32-bit & 64-bit), 2003 and Vista. No .NET framework is required. ¹
• [2.x] KeePass requires the Microsoft .NET Framework (which can be downloaded for free at Microsofts website). Windows Vista already includes this framework; for Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / XP you need to install it, if it’s not installed already.
• Ports for other systems like Linux, MacOSX, PocketPC, Smartphone, etc. are available! See the downloads page.

Export To TXT, HTML, XML and CSV Files

• The password list can be exported to various formats like TXT, HTML, XML and CSV.
• The XML output can be easily used in other applications.
• The HTML output uses cascading style sheets (CSS) to format the table, so you can easily change the layout.
• The CSV output is fully compatible with most other password safes like the commercial closed-source Password Keeper and the closed-source Password Agent, also the CSVs can be imported by spreadsheet applications like Microsofts Excel or OpenOffice’s Calc.
• Many other file formats are supported through KeePass plugins.

Import From Many File Formats

• KeePass uses the common CSV export format of various passwords safes like Password Keeper and Password Agent. Exports from these programs can be easily imported to your KeePass databases.
• KeePass can parse and import TXT outputs of CodeWalletPro, a commercial closed-source password safe.
• KeePass can import TXT files created by Bruce Schneier’s Password Safe v2.
• [2.x] Out of the box, KeePass supports importing more than 20 formats (see Help: Import).
• Many other file formats are supported through KeePass plugins.

Easy Database Transfer

• A password database consists of only one file that can be transferred from one computer to another easily.

Intuitive and Secure Windows Clipboard Handling

• Just double-click on any field of the password list to copy its value to the Windows clipboard.
• Timed clipboard clearing: KeePass can clear the clipboard automatically some time after you’ve copied one of your passwords into it.
• [1.x] Protection against clipboard monitors (other applications won’t get notifications that the clipboard content has been changed).
• [1.x] Paste-once functionality: allow only one paste operation, after pasting the clipboard is cleared automatically by KeePass.

Searching and Sorting

• You can search for specific entries in the databases.
• To sort a password group, just click on one of the column headers in the password list, you can sort by any column.

Multi-Language Support

• KeePass can be translated into other languages very easily.
• Over 30 different languages are available!
• See the translations page.

Strong Random Password Generator

• KeePass can generate strong random passwords for you.
• You can define the possible output characters of the generator (number of characters and type).
• Random seeding through user input: mouse movement and random keyboard input.

Open-Source!

• KeePass free and you have full access to its source code!
• Open-Source prevents from backdoors. You can have a look at its source code and compile it yourself.
• You can yourself check if the security is implemented correctly, you can, if you want, use any other encryption algorithm.
• Opening the sources also encourages other people to port the application to other systems (PocketPC version already in development) or write translations.
• KeePass is OSI Certified Open Source Software. OSI Certified is a certification mark of the Open Source Initiative.

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