The easiest way of course is through add-ons as Firefox calls them or extensions as Google Chrome calls them. Chrome has a lot going for it despite the vacuum of extensions.

But Google had promised support for Google Chrome extensions and it is beginning to keep it. The official support for extensions has been announced and though it’s still not fully on in the standard version, one gets it with the developer version of Google Chrome.

A few posts back we saw how to download and install Google Chrome extensions in the developer version. Do go through that post again and come back here. In this post we will check out some of the coolest extensions to download and use with Google Chrome.

The population may be small but the seeds of popularity are being sown with these baby steps.

1. Google Chrome Backup

   If the first thing you savor is peace of mind then the Google Chrome Backup is a must install. This is a small tool to create, backup, restore and manage Google Chrome profiles that holds all your bookmarks, history, saved passwords etc. This is not an extension in the strictest sense as it does not run within the browser but as a separate install. Nevertheless, it’s an important tool to have.

   

   The 1.1MB download works with Google Chrome version 0.2.149.27 onwards and requires .NET framework.

2. AdSweep

   A simple ad blocker extension that modifies the CSS rules on a webpage to hide the advertisements. The small javascript code recognizes ads (especially banner ads) based on specific patterns and blocks them. The extension may not work on all webpages because some ads may escape the recognition patterns used by AdSweep.

   

   The 32KB AdSweep userscript works with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

 

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3. Session Saver

   Something I really like because it harks back to the Save sessions and Manage sessions feature of Opera. It’s useful if you have to switch off and need to come back to the same tabs at some point later. This extension can save  multiple sessions each with its own name. You can also save all saved sessions as bookmarks.

   

   The 107KB Session Saver extension is compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

4. TPGoogleReader

   This is a Google Reader extension for Chrome. The extension makes reading and managing feeds a one click job. It installs as two little icons on the toolstrip and shows the number of unread feeds. In the normal mode, clicking on the items counter opens the first unread item and marks it as read. In the auto-mode, one click on the checkbox opens the unread items in background tabs and marks them as read.

   

   The 9.7KB TPGoogleReader extension is compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

5. Web of Trust

   WOT is a free browser add-on that protects the user from online scams and risky websites. A pop-up opens from the bottom of the screen and indicates not only the trustworthiness of a website but also how things stand with a site’s vendor reliability, child safety and privacy. You can also contribute your own ratings and select the ratings you want to get alerts on.

   

   The WOT extension is a 523KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

6. Smoothscroll

   This extension simply adds the smooth scrolling behavior to Google Chrome. Smooth scrolling auto-scrolls the browser at a constant speed. Click the middle mouse button/scroll wheel and drag the mouse down to set the scroll speed.

   The Smoothscroll extension is a 3KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

7. Bubble Translate

This Google Chrome extension enables you to do inline translations of a webpage into any language supported by Google Translate with a single click. You can set all language choices from its settings.



The Bubble Translate extension is a 34KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

8. Cleeki

   This extension is basically a feature rich search accelerator for Google Chrome. Highlight any keyword on a webpage and a little adjoining icon gives you access to a lot of internet choices from Wikipedia to YouTube to get more information. The information opens up in a little inline window, so you don’t need to browse away. Search can also be done on multiple sites at the same time.

   

   The Cleeki extension is a 56KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

9. LastPass
   

LastPass is an online form filler and password manager which got some high marks from us in a previous post. For error free performance, switch off Chrome’s inbuilt password manager (Wrench Icon – Options – Personal Stuff) and Form Autofill under the same tab.



The LastPass extension is a 315KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

10. Greasemetal

Familiar with Greasemonkey userscripts for Firefox? Those little pieces of code that help you customize your Firefox browser. Greasemetal is the Chrome incarnation of those handy javascripts which let you modify its behavior. It’s a good extension to have because a lot of userscripts continue o be developed and are made available from sites like Userscripts.org.

Greasemetal comes as a 1.2MB installer download for Google Chrome.

These ten extensions represent just a few of the many that are out there and slowly burgeoning with each iteration of the Chrome browser. Hopefully, it won’t be long before Chrome would give the Firefox add-ons gallery a run for its download. For us users, this is a war where we will get all the spoils.

True, ten is a very small number. Which is your extension you would have liked to have seen on the list?

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What characterizes a strong password? First of all, its length. The longer the password, the stronger it is and the longer it takes to be cracked. Secondly, the entropy or randomness of the generation process. If the attacker can make some statistical assumptions based on the method of generation, even a alphanumerical 8 character password can be cracked within hours. The third characteristic of password generator is trust. Do you trust that the password generator does not keep logs, do you trust that it doesn’t have a backdoor? Lastly, do you have a secure communication channel between the generator and the receiver? Most of the online password generators fail one or more of these guidelines, and even software solutions have problems.

The only completely secure method to generate passwords is to use an open-source generator stored on your computer, preferably running Linux. But even one of the website generated passwords is considerably more secure than any password you can come up with.

Perfect Passwords

Steve Gibson’s Perfect Passwords generator deserves the highest praise of all the solutions tested for this article. Besides the fact that Steve Gibson is a world renowned programmer, the algorithm used ensures a high level of entropy, and although there is no source code available to corroborate tech specs with the notes on the website, I personally trust it. The connection between the GRC server and your computer is secured by a SSL connection and the generator produces three strings at once: 64 random hexadecimal characters (0-9 and A-F), 63 random printable ASCII characters, 63 random alpha-numeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9). The most secure of all is the ASCII string which contains numbers, letters and special characters. You can use any part, the complete string or even mix them to create an unique password. Your password will look something like:

“4q){4′{y]SWt]796Ay|9=

While such a password will work for a web-based service or email account, you aren’t expected to remember it for your Windows account, it’s simply too complicated. I personally use a 12 character hexadecimal string for my user account password, which I can remember without having to write it down, like

FBA4F22489116F11F

This too, can be cracked with Rainbow tables, but it will deter most guys without NSA-level knowledge and processing power.

If you’re asking yourself,”How I can use 12 random ASCII characters for every password I have?” Here’s my system.

1. I have an IronKey, a secure USB thumb drive that itself is protected by a 12 character hexadecimal string. All the data on the drive is hardware-encrypted. It will automatically self-destruct if physically tampered or if the password is entered 10 times wrong.
2. The IronKey has an integrated password manager and a hardened mobile version of Firefox 3. The passwords never pass through the computer’s keyboard or compromised applications.
3. When using my own hardware, which I can vouch is secure, for performance reasons I will use an Excel document which contains a list of services and their assigned passwords, stored on Google Docs. I will never save any passwords into the Firefox password manager. The only way this system can be compromised is by first cracking the computer user account password and hoping that the cookie session is still active.

Editor’s note: IronKey is not free. It starts at $79. If you think that it’s worth the money to protect your privacy and security, then check it out.
The other services I tested were:

PCTools

PCTools – which provides different options for generating passwords: length, punctuation, numbers, letters etc. as well as a SSL secured connection. They also have a freeware, offline version of the generator. It’s not open-source and the technical details are not available for inspection.

GoodPassword

GoodPassword – offers both a random password generator with some customization options and a “Leet” generator that “Leet Passwords are easy to remember acronym passwords generated by combining the first letter of each word, randomly changing the case, and replacing alphanumeric characters with their Leet (1337) equivalents, that is characters that look and/or sound the same”.

Multicians

Multicians – generates ten “pronounceable” passwords using a Java applet. It’s not open-source but the source code is available for inspection. No SSL connection.

For Linux

Linux users can use this command to quickly create a strong password:

% dd if=/dev/urandom count=1 2> /dev/null | uuencode -m – | sed -ne 2p | cut -c-8v1/oVN+S

You might want to read on through:

- How To Create Strong Passwords That You Can Remember Easily
- Securely Synchronize Your Browser Passwords With LastPass

There were also a bunch of other password generators profiled on MakeUseOf directory.

Photo credit: Jelmer.

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• KeyDb – A Portable Password Manager (15)

Some of the features of great password managers are encryption and portability. You want your password manager to be encrypted, because that extra security can be necessary. Portability is also important, because what good is a password manager if you can’t use it everywhere? I travel a decent amount and use many different computers, so I want to always have my passwords with me.  Guessing for half an hour is never a good use of your time.

Enter KeyDb, a portable password manager.

KeyDb comes in and provides all of these features to you in a very simple and light weight program.

Installation

There is none!  KeyDb is just a 1.14 MB executable.  I wouldn’t have called it portable if it wasn’t.  This small size makes it extremely easy to take it anywhere even on your old flash drive.

Creating a Password File

KeyDb keeps your passwords in different files. You can have them all in one file or create multiple files for multiple users or purposes. Just click on the file menu and create a new password file to get started. The following window will pop up.

Once your password file is set up, start adding those passwords.

Adding Passwords

All you need to do is click on the plus symbol at the top left of the software window.  This will launch a window that will allow you to input your password information.

The software comes with a few default categories, but you can add as many as you want to keep your passwords organized.  Also, you can use the password generator to generate a very solid password if you like.

Web URLs can be used, and KeyDb can launch your default browser to go to that website, so you can quickly input your password. Notes can also be added to give you more information about the site or whatever you see fit.

Finished Product

Once you upload all of your passwords, your KeyDb will look similar to the following.

You can filter and sort your passwords to easily get to what you are looking for.

KeyDb performs as advertised.  It is dead simple and takes no time at all to get going. Also, the size (1.14 MB) and the 256 bit encryption rounds out the package.

What do you use for your password manager? Are you familiare with any other good portable password manager?

Photo Credit : Mirko Macari

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Below, I would like to share my favorite essential security downloads that have helped me keep my system secure over the last 2-3 years. Check them out and tell us what you think in comments.

1. AVG Anti-Virus (Windows)

AVG is a free anti-virus program, also a really good one. In the past I have tried Norton, Kaspersky, NOD 32 and several others but finally settled on AVG. It’s been my preferred anti-virus program for the last couple of years. MakeUseOf readers seem to agree as well.

We have already reviewed the AVG on MakeUseOf before so if you want to know all the details check out Mark’s AVG review here.

To get an idea here are some of the things you get with AVG:

* real time virus checking
* automatic daily updates
* scans incoming/outgoing emails for viruses
* removes malicious tracking cookies from the browser
* scans search results (ex. Google) and warns about non safe links.
* option control the speed of virus scanning process

2. MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (Windows)

Malwarebytes is an easy-to-use and effective anti-malware application. With over 8 million downloads MalwareBytes is ranked as the 6th most popular software download on Download.com and second in spyware removal category. The users ratings and reviews are pretty good as well.

Malwarebytes’ claims to detect and remove malware that many of the other well known spyware removal programs fail to detect. I can’t really confirm that but after using it for about 2 months it has become my primary spyware removal/scanner app. I must admit I haven’t been using this one long enough yet but so far it has done a pretty good job.

While MalwareBytes doesn’t offer as many features as other tools in that category, it has a comprehensive library of threats to protect against. It’s also very light on your system resources.

The program does have a few more options open to you. For instance, it adds a contextual right-click option to scan individual files. This second option is handy for times when you have to download a file that you think is suspect or need to open someone’s flash drive.

There are some other handy addons as well. You can read more about MalwareBytes in a previous MakeUseoOf article Stop & Delete Spyware With Malwarebytes.

The Basic version which consists of a spyware scanner and removal tool is free. The Pro version costs $24.95 and comes with an additional Protection Module that can detect malware before it can do any significant damage.

3. Spyware Terminator (Windows)

I use Spyware Terminator as my secondary spyware removal tool.

I first heard about it from Bill Mullins, a security expert and MakeUseOf author who recommended the app for real-time spyware protection. In his own words:

As you can see, Spyware Terminator is my current application of choice in the spyware protection/removal category. Having tested virtually all of the major anti-spyware apps over the last year or more, I’ve settled, for now, on Spyware Terminator.

The program is easy to setup and customize, for both less experienced and expert users alike. One noteworthy feature of Spyware Terminator is its ‘Real-Time Shield’ that silently runs in the background and offers strong active protection against both known and unknown threats.

Moreover, there is a simple option to schedule automatic updates and fast spyware scans on a daily basis to ensure your computer is clean.

4. Comodo Firewall Pro (Windows)

Firewall has an essential role in safeguarding your PC. It can block unauthorized remote attempts to access your computer as well as attempts to transfer data by locally installed programs. Unfortunately not many people know about that.

Windows XP and Vista users already have the default Windows Firewall but based on my past experience I don’t find it effective and prefer Comodo Firewall instead (and so do many others).

Just like the above mentioned AVG, Comodo Firewall also came out as the best Firewall in our poll. It’s also probably the lightest one when it comes to your precious system resources. For me it takes only about 3.2 MB on average.

Comodo automatically monitors your connection and alerts you whenever some remote computer or locally installed program tries to initiate an unauthorized connection.

In many cases it also gives you advice on how to react to the alert.

Moreover, Comodo Firewall also comes with something called Defense + Host Intrusion Prevention System. This security addon helps to further secure your computer against malicious craplets before they can do any harm to your system.

Note: Like with any extensive security software if you haven’t used a Firewall before you might find Comodo alerts a little overwhelming. So, keep in mind that it takes some time to get used to.

5. NoScript – Firefox

With over 42 million downloads NoScript is the most popular Firefox addon out there. So if you haven’t tried it before it’s time to do so now.

To put it simply, NoScript makes web browsing safer by blocking everything that can potentially be used to harm your computer. The includes JavaScript, Java, Flash and other executable content.

Now there is one thing to keep in mind here, while you do get a safety net with this addon, as a novice user at the beginning you might find it annoying to constantly add sites to your “trusted sites” list. For instance, when you visit Youtube for the first time after installing it the videos won’t load unless you add Youtube to your trusted list.

But the good news, adding sites to the trusted list can be accomplished with a click of a button and you need to do it only once.

Also for the websites that present information from several sources you might have to “allow” several sites before you are able to view them in full. In such cases you can simply select “Allow all this page” option.

To sum up, NoScript does take some time to get used to but is definitely worth it. Just like like the Comodo Firewall. If you have any questions check out their FAQ page here.

6. Lastpass (Firefox / Internet Explorer)

LastPass is that one password manager you have been waiting for. Unlike Internet Explorer and Firefox’s built in password managers, data in your LastPass Vault is encrypted. The encrypted login details are stored on LastPass server which are then accessible from your browser or any web-enabled computer that you have Lastpass installed on.

It takes about a minute to install and setup.

Once you have set it up, you can start adding your accounts by simply going to sites and login as usual. When Lastpass asks if you want it to remember the login details for the site, click ‘OK’ and done. Next time you visit the site lastpass will fill the login details automatically.

You will only need to know one password, that is the the password to your Lastpass account. You will have to enter it everytime the browser is restarted.

Once logged in you’ll be able to access your web accounts with a single click. Other lastpass features include:

- auto online form filling
- ability to access your account details from multiple computers
- password generator
- and more …

7. WOT (Web Of Trust) – Firefox

Another extremely popular Firefox addon. I have been using WOT for about 4-5 months and so far it has been great. The purpose of WOT is to warn users about unsafe websites before they actually enter them. These unsafe site can mean a site known to scam visitors, deliver malware, send spam etc.

WOT uses color-coded icons show ratings for over 21 million websites – green for safe, yellow for caution and red for stop. Screenshot below shows WOT safety icons on Google search results.

As you can see from the screenshot above WOT warns about the first two entries. So I would skip them.

Do you use any of the the above tools? Any others you would want to add to the list? Please share them with us in comments.

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So after you’ve registered at your bank, your three credit cards, your Facebook, your Digg and your blog, you’re so exhausted with usernames and passwords, you begin using your browser’s built-in “Remember This Password” feature. The problem with using this handy feature is that you’re never required to enter another password again. Remembering all those passwords can be quite hard, unless of course you have a method to create strong passwords that are easy to remember.

Now you go home for Christmas, hop on your parents computer to check your latest stock portfolio, and you spend the next hour trying to recall your password. This is where a program like LastPass saves the day.

LastPass is a Firefox or Internet Explorer browser add-on that stores all of your passwords locally and synchronizes all of them to any other browser (with the same add-on) using 256-bit AES encryption. The only two requirements is one strong password and one of the previously mentioned browsers.

After going through the incredibly easy flash-based installation tutorial, the application asks for a strong password as protection and then offers the option to import passwords from Firefox, IE, RoboForm, KeePass, Sxipper and a few others.

Once you have all of your passwords imported, they’ll fill all of your identifiable username and password boxes appropriately.

If a site isn’t stored in the database, it will simply ask you to remember the password, as your current browsers already do.

Again, all of these passwords are stored locally. LastPass uses highly sophisticated code to allow this to happen, so nothing sits out in the cloud.

Once stored, the database is easily accessible to view form information if it needs to be modified in any way.

Along with its great password capabilities, LastPass also includes:

Form Filling

Whether it be for credit card payments or simple site registration, once the they have all the correct information, LastPass takes care of all of the typing.

Password Generation

Generate incredibly strong passwords if you can’t come up with your own.

Site Sharing

Share a site with another member of your family.

Site Logging

Monitor what sites are being logged into, when and where.

As you can see, LastPass has what many of the commercial form fillers, like RoboForm have, plus the added sync capability. The form filling also separates it from password managers, such as PassPack and Clipperz.

If you are already willing to locally store all of your passwords through your browser, you really can’t go wrong with LastPass. It does the exact same thing, in a much more secure fashion.

Again LastPass works in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, on Mac, Linux and Windows.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any better sync solutions? Concerns?

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In any case, after waiting for a reasonable period, and knowing that the fault wasn’t going to correct itself, I needed to speak with the helpdesk. They were hoping that I could pass on some important information such as my login, account number, date of birth, that sort of thing. I managed the birthday part, but the rest of it was beyond me. I had two copies of the necessary information. One set was in Clipperz, and the other set was in an encrypted container, the password for which was in… You guessed it… Clipperz.

So, Clipperz – The Password Manager

I did some earlier research and decided that Clipperz was the online password manager that works the most like I want it to, and it has some interesting ways to deal with web links. The site is free, but does badger you from time to time to donate some of your hard earned cash to the project.

Online Password Managers – also called OPMs, use a variety of techniques to keep your security information safe. The primary requirement of course is that you trust them in two respects.

Firstly that they are what they say they are, and will actually treat your passwords in the way they promise to.

The second requirement is that their solution is actually as secure as they say it is, to ensure that your secrets are not divulged to anyone else.

Don’t confuse what’s happening here with saving passwords in your browser. That’s a whole different subject.

Joining up

There’s no requirement to supply an email address, so you can be as anonymous as you like. Logins are based on a user name and a passphrase. That’s just like a password, but you are encouraged you to use something significantly longer. Choosing the phrase is out of the scope of this post, but the longer the better, in general. Clipperz indicates the strength of your phrase as you add it. (All of the info used for these screenshots is false. Relax.)

Adding cards

Once you’ve logged on, you’re presented with a card view. It’s empty the first time you hit the page, but each card relates to a particular set of information. For instance, your Yahoo address, login, password, etc. You can add and change the fields to suit your purposes.

Click Add new card to start. The first thing Clipperz wants to know is what type of card you want to create. A Web Password is the most common, so let’s start with that. Click the button next to the type of card you want. Click the Create button.

Each different card type defaults a different set of fields. You can use those supplied, or add some of your own. The confusing box at the top is for the title of the card, though it doesn’t say so anywhere. So change Web password to what you actually want the title to be. Webmail perhaps.

Fill in the other fields just the way you might think. Notice that the password field shows up as a row of stars unless you click the unscramble link below the field. If you don’t yet have a password, you can click on the button with the key to have one created for you. There are some options in the password creator to select required length, type of characters and so on.

Click the Save button to return to the list of cards. Every time you save something in Clipperz your data is locally re-encrypted, and saved back to the site.

To make use of the cards you’ve added, just click on the card in the list, and if necessary unscramble the password. Normal physical security rules apply here. No one should be standing behind you, for instance.

Direct One-click Logins

One of the unusual features in Clipperz is the ability to create a clickable link for a web page that will log you in without you having to type anything else. The site uses bookmarklets to capture the necessary code from the pages to login on your behalf. It’s a lot safer than it sounds, but I won’t go into that this time. You should take a look though. You can use complex (and therefore safer) passwords with ease using this feature.

Keeping Your Passwords Offline

This is the part of Clipperz that I like the most. With a single click you can create a fully encrypted local copy of your data that’s just as secure as the online one. An HTML page containing encrypted code that replicates the copy at the site.

There is one restriction on the use of the offline copy. It’s read-only.

I lied about the single click, too. It actually takes two. Click Data from the main menu, and then click the Download link further down the page.

Choose to save the HTML page that is created. Browse to the page and open it. Voila!

So how secure is Clipperz?

The idea is that your information is encrypted using javascript code, on your browser, and then sent, encrypted, to the website. Clipperz doesn’t have your passphrase, and cannot decrypt your information. It’s called Zero-Knowledge. They don’t know, so they cannot tell.

Is it safe? It’s a lot safer than storing your passwords in the normal fashion with websites, and plenty of people do that.

If you’re a security nerd, look up the specifications yourself. You can review the source code as well.

Clipperz has 20,000 subscribers and over 250,000 stored passwords.

As always, do your research, and decide for yourself.

Details, details…

It’s cross-platform (works on Windows, Mac and Linux PC), though obviously you need a browser that supports JavaScript. You can import and export the data. Works best with Firefox. You can run the site in a sidebar. Granular sharing is reportedly due soon. Nothing to install, no maintenance.

Other Pasword Mangers

- Using Keepass to Secure Your Online Accounts
- PasswordSafe
- MashedLife – Securely Store Your Passwords Online

So I’m interested. What’s your strategy? How well does it work? Have you ever been stuck without the passwords you need? Like the ones to lock the kids out of the Net?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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After looking around for different password managers, I came across KeePass. The main features that drew me to this program:

• Open Source – Allows the ability to analyze the encryption methods
• Cross Platform – Clients available for Windows, Ubuntu, Linux, MacOS X, J2ME (Cell Phones), Blackberry, Windows Mobile and more
• Portable – Requires no installation

Installation is a cinch – visit the download page and install or unzip the software. Open Keepass.exe (on Windows), go to File->Open and create a new file.

While you type your password, it will tell you how many bits encryption it will provide, and also a bar with how secure/complex it is. After hitting OK, enter your password again to make sure you typed what you thought you did.

Inside Keepass you will see a Folder structure where you can organize your logins according to type or use. In my case, I keep separate areas for Work and Personal logins. Click “Add Entry…” to add a new login:

A password will be automatically generated – useful if you are making a new account. Click the three dots to change from a masked password to the plain text one.

If you want to have fine-grained control over your new password, while maintaining security, KeepPass includes a password generation tool.

For the ultra paranoid such as myself – you can click the box “Collect additional entropy” – this will ask you to move your mouse randomly around a box and type in random letters. Even if the default is secure, it gives my possibly neurotic self a great deal of satisfaction.

For ultimate usefulness, I have KeePass installed on my USB Keydrive. With the price of USB Keychain drives so low, and the size so large; I’ve found it invaluable to carry around with me at all time in case a tech emergency comes up (I am even able to boot off of it with a slew of diagnostic utilities – more on that later!) It was not a big jump for me to keep my passwords with me at all times, just like keeping my keys with me.

Along with the great advantage of always having your passwords available, there are a few downsides to this. If you lose your Key Drive you have two main problems. The first is that potentially someone else will be able to access your password. Since the password file is encrypted – this should be taken care of. The second is the loss of this file. For this reason, it is essential to back up the password file regularly.

I use a backup tool called SyncBack SE for this. It has been previously reviewed on this site by Mark. The paid version has many priceless (in my opinion) features – one being that it has an “On Insert” option. In the profile, select the drive letter that is assigned for your USB Key Drive on the “Insert” tab. On inserting your drive, it will automatically run this profile and back up your files.

With this program running, all you need to do is plug in the USB drive – for example if you are accessing a password, and it will run a backup. Just what I like – a backup process that you don’t need to think about. Less interference means easier backups!

I’ve been using KeePass for all of my passwords now for a while and I would never turn back. I must have over 200 sites with passwords I need to remember, if not more. Some have weird password requirements which would make it necessary for me to create new ones that are impossible to remember. This system has been working perfectly and I would recommend it for anyone who is required to remember more than a handful of passwords!

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