Registered Project and Released 1.0

Ok, that’s not new news, since it’s been done last year. Still, this site didn’t record the change to the work that happened on the password store component on a purely organizational level, so here’s my chance to catch up: Password Store is now a component registered with joomlacode.org. Go to the com_passwords project if you want to download the latest and greatest, or if you want to log bugs, suggest improvements or (God forbid! Continue reading

Completed Password Store in Record Time

So, in less than a few hours, I completed the password store component for Joomla. That’s partially because I worked from a different component that had most of the options I needed, but partially also because I could easily use the Joomla infrastructure, which requires little in the wake of learning. Of course, while it’s a functional component, it’s still not at 1.0. Hardcoded strings (they are in the original, too), incomplete removal of spurious options, you know, that stuff. Continue reading

Heady Progress on Passwords Front

In just one major bored morning, I made huge progress with the passwords store component. You can now enter notes, the content will be filtered out and strong formatting will be stripped from regular view. Editing a note works, as does showing the list and the entry. The piece missing now is the cookie for the passphrase storage. There I need to add the page that requests the passphrase, the one that allows you to create the passphrase, and the session cookie that will store the passphrase, encrypted using the master passphrase and the day (so that cookies expire every day). Continue reading

Using built-in content?

Looking at the note table, I realized it looks A LOT like the standard Joomla content table. Should I have used that one as a content store? After all, the content offers two locations for the message (intro and fulltext) and all the other goodies (except for last access time). In the end, I decided against it. Creating a new table is cheap, and putting stuff in content means I have to version PSC at the same time as Joomla versions its content store. Continue reading

PSC Database Structure

After thinking about the component, it’s time to define how it is going to work within the Joomla framework. We will need two database tables: The per-user settings like passphrase, security question, etc. The notes themselves, tied to users The first table needs to have the user id as primary key. Other columns will be: encrypted passphrase encrypted temporary passphrase security question encrypted answer to security question The second table will be more complex and have the following columns in addition to an integer ID: Continue reading

Password Store Component

I decided I need to do something useful with my spare time, and instead of continuing with useless trial projects, I will create a component that is of general use: a note taking tool that allows for strong encryption, defines password areas, and uses its own authentication schem. It is meant to store user account information in a secure fashion. Given the amount of security coding I do, I have a clear idea of what I want: the component will store per-user specific notes whose first line becomes the title of the note. Continue reading