Admin’s Arsenal: KeePass v1.x

Someone asked me today what tool I would say helps me most in my day to day job duties. Man was that a tough question to answer! I have about 30-40 tools that I use on a daily (or at least every other day) basis, so to pick one is like having to choose what finger you like best (no snickering back there).

I guess what it all comes down to is what tool I use most. Hands down that tool is KeePass Password Safe.

It’s hard to cover everything that KeePass does, but this quote from the official site does a better job than I can:

KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).

I use KeePass more than any other tool in my Arsenal simply because I have so many passwords to remember.

One of the features that makes KeePass better than other password managers is that you can attach files to entries, which are then encrypted with the KeePass Database. I personally use this to keep all of our VPN keys handy so that when a user complains that they are having problems with their VPN, I can log in as them and see if it is in fact an issue with their VPN tunnel or just user error.

My absolute favorite feature though is its portabliity. Here is a short list of all the different platforms that KeePass works on:

• Windows
• Linux
• Mac OSX
• BlackBerry (huge score here as I love being able to access all my passwords from my phone)
• PocketPC and Smart Devices (including Windows Mobile 6.0)
• Symbian
• PalmOS
• USB drives (specifically portableapps.com)
• USB drives (U3 platform)
• PE environments (WinPE and BARTPE)

Pretty much anywhere you are likely to need it from. I specifically call out the 1.x versions as the 2.x ALPHA versions require the DotNET framework, and are not as portable as a side effect. No need to worry though, 1.x is still in active development, and is open source, so even if the current devs stop work on it, development will continue.

KeePass also has quite an extensive plugin library, which further enhances it’s functionality. If you’re looking for a password manager that you can use anywhere, you would be hard pressed to find one better at it than KeePass.