Summary
In this chapter, we looked at some of the most common password manager (or password vault) utilities. These applications trade off having to memorize many good passwords in exchange for remembering just one good password. However, if this password is not written down or kept safe in other ways, we may be forced to try and retrieve it. Unfortunately, as we have seen, that is easier said than done – between computationally expensive hashing algorithms, flexible numbers of rounds that keep getting increased, and some significant password complexity requirements in some cases, we may have a hard time recovering vault passwords unless the user remembers some elements of its construction, so we can try to leverage techniques such as mask attacks and other methods where partial knowledge can be leveraged. Thankfully, this also translates to greater overall security within these solutions.
In the next chapter, we will look at some common cryptocurrency wallets and evaluate...