Re: decrypting the .dat file

Arnaud Sahuguet <[email protected]> Wed, 22 Dec 2004 13:37:04 -0500
Newsgroups gmane.comp.security.passwordsafe.user
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Thanks for info.
I looked at the source code and I should be able to write a program to
decrypt the file, if needed. But I guess I will wait for the need to
show up.

I just want to make sure that if one day I am in a non-Windows
environment, I can retrieve my dat file from the network and run a
simple cmd line script to recover the passwords if needed.

When using PasswordSafe to generate the password, it is very unlikely
that I will even bother to remember them.

regards,

Arnaud


On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 19:48:08 +0200, Rony Shapiro <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Arnauld,
> 
> Short answer: The .dat file cannot be encrypted/decrypted all at once. A
> workaround would be to export the .dat file to plain text and
> encrypting/decrypting this with a program/algorithm that is available on
> your target platform.
> 
> WARNING: Doing this is potentially VERY unsecure, as the decrypted data may
> remain on the target machine, even after you've deleted the file.
> 
> Long answer: There's no need to guess, as the format of the .dat file is
> fully documented in the files that come with the source code. Briefly, each
> entry stored as a record of variable length fields. All are encrypted using
> Blowfish with the same key, but each record has its own salt.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
>         Cheers,
> 
>                 Rony
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [email protected]
> > [mailto:[email protected]] On
> > Behalf Of Arnaud Sahuguet
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 5:43 PM
> > To: [email protected]
> > Subject: [Passwordsafe-users] decrypting the .dat file
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I saw some previous posting on this topic but no conclusion.
> >
> > I agree that decrypting the .dat file may create some security issues.
> > However, since PasswordSafe only runs on a windows platform, what
> > happens when I am travelling with no Windows box around.
> >
> > I would like to be able to decrypt the .dat file from any machine,
> > from the command line for instance.
> >
> > My guess is that the .dat file stores the passwords as ASCII, with AES
> > or Blowfish encryption, and maybe some salting. I just would like to
> > know which algorithm to use.
> > Once again, without the password, the only way to crack the .dat file
> > is to use brute force or dictionary attack.
> >
> > regards,
> >
> > Arnaud
> >
> 
>


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