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There has been a lot of attention in the news lately about email passwords being compromised. Today we take a look at using KeePass to secure your passwords in an encrypted database so no one can get a hold of them.

KeePass

For this article we are using KeePass 2.09 but you can still download the Classic Edition as well, which you may want to do so you can use certain plugins. Installation is straight forward and after installing KeePass, the first thing is to create a new password database by clicking on File \ New.

You will need to come up with a Master Password which is the only one you will need to remember moving forward. Make sure and pick a strong password with several characters, symbols, and numbers. It can be an entire phrase, sentence, or whatever you want it to be with virtually any characters you want.

Alternatively you can use a Key File which a master password in a file. This makes it so you don’t have to remember a long Master Password, but if it gets lost and not backed up you’re out of luck. Also, you want to keep the file in a secret location other than your local hard drive, malware attacks can find it if it’s openly available on your hard drive.

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The PortableApps.com Suite, a full-featured app package that runs from a USB drive, has upgraded with a crisper-looking and more customizable menu, the latest versions of a ton of great freeware, and other improvements.

A new theme brings some transparency, mouse-over effects, and display improvements to the PortableApps menu, but the release notes bury the big news—you’ll be able to theme the suite yourself in the next release, due out in less than two weeks. The app icons on the pop-up menu can be renamed or hidden, applications can be launched as an administrator, and the menu can hide all the icons and switch wallpapers on whatever PC you’re on.

A PortableApp thumb drive loaded with a customized Firefox browser, office suites, IM clients, KeePass, and other portable offerings is a great way to get things done when you’re at a computer that’s not your own—or testing out stuff on your system you don’t quite want to install and muck around with.

The PortableApps.com suite comes in three flavors (basic, lite, and standard), is a free download, and launches on Windows systems only. Got a killer PortableApp setup on your thumb drive? Share the app list in the comments.

PortableApps.com Suite 1.5

A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind!

I personally have a large memory card on my Windows Mobile phone… so I can use something that I always have with me anyway as a way to carry around software. Pretty handy…

So let’s start with the mac daddy, the PortableApps Suite:

PortableApps.com Suite™ is a complete collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, audio player, sudoku game, password manager, PDF reader, minesweeper clone, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go.

All versions of the PortableApps.com Suite include the integrated PortableApps.com Menu (pictured at right) and the PortableApps.com Backup utility along with a set of custom icons, an autoplay configuration, folders and a quick start shortcut. In addition, the packages include:

• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition (web browser)
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition (email)
• Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition (calendar/tasks)
• ClamWin Portable (antivirus)
• Pidgin Portable (instant messaging)
• Sumatra PDF Portable (PDF reader
• KeePass Password Safe Portable (password manager)
• Sudoku Portable (game)
• Mines-Perfect Portable (game)
• CoolPlayer+ Portable (audio player)
• OpenOffice.org Portable* (office suite)
  - Writer (word processor)
  - Calc (spreadsheet)
  - Impress (presentations)
  - Base (database utility)
  - Draw (drawing)

*Note: The Light Suite includes AbiWord Portable (word processor) instead of OpenOffice.org Portable.

Portable apps doesn’t have it all… so let’s look at some of the rest:

Most other portable software can be found at PortableFreeware. While most people can get away with the PortableApps Suite there are a few things missing that I consider crucial to  your portable arsenal.

• Truecrypt - TrueCrypt creates virtual encrypted disks within a file and mount them as a real disk. It supports a full range of encryption algorithms, including AES-256, which is used within the government for information as high up as Top Secret classification.
• NotePad++ – Notepad++ is one of the few source code text editors that supports folding. In addition, it features multi-language syntax highlighting, auto-completion, regular expression search/replace, macro recording and playback etc. This is my preferred FREE text editor, it’s fast, light, and easy to use. And let’s face it… how often do you  really need a full blown Word Processor when on the run. If you’ll need one, plan ahead and take your laptop!
• CCleaner – CCleaner is a system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system and cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally, and most importantly to me, it contains a fully featured registry cleaner.
• uTorrent – µTorrent is a small BitTorrent client that uses very little system resources. This is my favorite BitTorrent client for the desktop, and while I wouldn’t suggest you run it full time from a portable USB device it could be handy in a pinch if you needed to grab something that requires a torrent download.
• Foxit Reader Portable – Ok look, PDF’s suck. I hate them… seriously. More than that I hate Acrobat Reader since it’s a huge bloated application that takes forever to launch even on a fully modern PC. Having said that, there’s a LOT of PDF’s out there. Enter Foxt Reader which is a small and fast PDF viewer that is compatible with PDF Standard 1.6. Don’t think you’re limited to only the portable version, there is also a desktop version… ditch Acrobat for good!
• 7-Zip – Oddly absent from the portableApps Suite is a compression utility. 7-Zip is a file archiver that supports just about every compression format you can think of.
• FileZilla – A really good portable FTP client.

Just a note that most all of these portable apps can be integrated right into the PortableApps suite menu. The PortableApps.com Menu can automatically add apps in PortableApps.com Format. Just download the file you’d like to add (like FileZilla Portable, for instance). Then, in PortableApps.com Menu, click Options – Add a New App – Install and then select the FileZilla Portable .paf.exe file you just downloaded. The PortableApps.com Menu will automatically install it to the proper location for you.

KeePass is a free open source password manager, 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).

Keepass comes in a portable version, perfect for keeping on a USB thumbdrive. The password database consists of only one file that can be transferred from one computer to another easily.

Keepass is open source and totally free (released under the GPL).  Version 2.x (the latest) runs on Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, Mono (Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, …), the only requirement being that you have Microsoft .NET Framework ? 2.0 or Mono ? 2.0.1. It allows for exporting to XML, HTML, CSV, KDB3, XSL-Transformed, and importing from more than 25 different formats. KeePass 2.x already has built-in support for file synchronization and because it has a plugin architecture which allows others to extend the application you can also download a plugin to synchronize with online storage providers!

KeePass supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, Rijndael) and the Twofish algorithms to encrypt its password databases, this is the same type of encryption used by banks and the government, so you know your data is safe.

Grab a copy of Keepass from keepass.info.