Paul Boddie
2017-02-18 22:54:04 UTC
Hello,
I saw Pastilda featured a while back on Crowd Supply, and it looks like the
campaign has now started:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/third-pin/pastilda
It's described as an "open-source hardware password manager", although I don't
know how "open source" it actually is. The device sits between your keyboard
and the computer, and the interface appears to involve emulating a keyboard,
with a key combination on your actual keyboard switching to password mode, and
then the device somehow showing credential entries on screen. You seem to need
to use a text field (or similar writable interface) to interact with the
device.
I guess what happens is that the text box you use is where you want a login
name to appear, the device "types" the name of an account or service from its
list into the text box, and it "backspaces" the name and "types" out the next
one when you navigate between accounts. It wouldn't be much of an interface if
you only had a password field and were prompted to choose between "********"
and "********" for your login, but there probably aren't many interfaces like
that. ;-)
I imagine that upon selecting an account, it finally "types" out the username
(or equivalent) in the selected field, then "tabs" to subsequent fields,
hopefully populating them all correctly (and not writing the password into the
wrong one), before issuing "Enter" or "Return". Maybe command line interfaces
allow configuration of whether "tabbing" or "entering" is used, which is
something some annoying Web interfaces would be sensitive to as well.
It seems like a clever approach to avoid weird plugins and extensions on the
computer, if I understand what they're doing. As for the management of
credentials, I haven't looked into that at all. Anyway, I hope it is of mild
interest to the Anelok community.
Paul
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I saw Pastilda featured a while back on Crowd Supply, and it looks like the
campaign has now started:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/third-pin/pastilda
It's described as an "open-source hardware password manager", although I don't
know how "open source" it actually is. The device sits between your keyboard
and the computer, and the interface appears to involve emulating a keyboard,
with a key combination on your actual keyboard switching to password mode, and
then the device somehow showing credential entries on screen. You seem to need
to use a text field (or similar writable interface) to interact with the
device.
I guess what happens is that the text box you use is where you want a login
name to appear, the device "types" the name of an account or service from its
list into the text box, and it "backspaces" the name and "types" out the next
one when you navigate between accounts. It wouldn't be much of an interface if
you only had a password field and were prompted to choose between "********"
and "********" for your login, but there probably aren't many interfaces like
that. ;-)
I imagine that upon selecting an account, it finally "types" out the username
(or equivalent) in the selected field, then "tabs" to subsequent fields,
hopefully populating them all correctly (and not writing the password into the
wrong one), before issuing "Enter" or "Return". Maybe command line interfaces
allow configuration of whether "tabbing" or "entering" is used, which is
something some annoying Web interfaces would be sensitive to as well.
It seems like a clever approach to avoid weird plugins and extensions on the
computer, if I understand what they're doing. As for the management of
credentials, I haven't looked into that at all. Anyway, I hope it is of mild
interest to the Anelok community.
Paul
_______________________________________________
Qi Hardware Discussion List
Mail to list (members only): ***@lists.en.qi-hardware.com
Subscribe or Unsubscribe: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailm