PawHash

Description

PawHash is a Chrome/Chromium extension which securely generates website-specific passwords from a single master password. It's based on the excellent Password Hasher extension for Firefox by Steve Cooper (http://wijjo.com/passhash) and generates the same passwords given the same inputs.

Using the same password on many websites is a security risk, because many sites do not store the password securely or are vulnerable to exploits allowing the passwords to be intercepted. When one site is compromised and the passwords stolen and cracked, this often allows the attacker to use the same username/email and password to log in as those users on many different sites.

However, remembering a unique password for every website is impractical. This extension solves the problem by allowing you to remember just one master password, which is used to calculate a unique and secure password for a given site. This works by using a "hash algorithm" which, given the master password and the name of the website, combines them in a way which is impossible to reverse, but generates the same result every time.

This avoids having to use a password manager which stores all your passwords, meaning there is nothing for an attacker to steal, and you can use any computer you trust without needing to have a copy of your password file.

Thanks to Steve Cooper for the original Firefox Password Hasher extension (http://wijjo.com/passhash) and to Paul Johnston for the jshash library (http://pajhome.org.uk/crypt/md5).