From simon.urbanek at r-project.org  Sun Dec 18 22:16:27 2011
From: simon.urbanek at r-project.org (Simon Urbanek)
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 16:16:27 -0500
Subject: [Rd] secure password token management method in R
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Message-ID: <7A1CFD16-8BE6-4F77-B127-84F12F1CFEED@r-project.org>

Barry,

that's a great idea. I have created a package that allows you to read/write passwords to user's keychain:

http://www.rforge.net/keychain

So far it uses the Security framework so you'll need a Mac, it but I'm about to add a generic fall-back system (encrypted file on-disk) and possibly the gnome API as well.

Cheers,
Simon


On Dec 18, 2011, at 9:03 AM, Barry Rowlingson wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 1:28 AM, Paul Gilbert <pgilbert902 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> One way this is often done is to have this information in a file that only
>> the owner can read. For example, mysql uses a file .my.cnf (in Windows it
>> may have a different name). The code then just reads the information from
>> the file. To guard against user carelessness, I think mysql will not use it
>> if anyone other than the user has read permission on the file. Of the
>> various options for passing user/password information, I think this is
>> general considered one of the better ways.
> 
> If anyone has a large chunk of spare time on their hands they could
> implement an R interface to the Gnome Keyring and store credentials in
> there.  I think under the hood it uses dbus so first implement dbus in
> R. Or just call some code with system()...
> 
> gnome keyring API: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeKeyring/StoringPasswords
> 
> command line interface: https://launchpad.net/gkeyring
> 
> Probably getting a bit over the top now.
> 
> Barry
> 
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[Rd] secure password token management method in R
Simon Urbanek