Keychains and Password Security

Hey guys, this is Matt. Heads on. This is just going to be a video on keychain security and what is a keychain.

Now, you may have noticed that when you set up something like iChat or Mail, that it saves all your passwords for all your accounts so that way you don't have to log in every time you open them. Of course, you can still change your password, but it does save them.

You might also notice when you open up Safari, sometimes it asks you for your keychain password. It doesn't in this case, but it sometimes will, and so that's kind of, um, interesting. So, um, basically, what is a keychain? Is it secure? And I'll just show you.

First of all, keychains are basically a file. Each keychain is a file that can contain passwords or pieces of text or something important like that. Let me just demonstrate to you. There's a program on your computer probably called Keychain Access. If not, it's been removed or I'm not sure why, but right here you can see here's my keychain right here.

You can open Keychain Access. So here are the things that are gonna show you: Login, System, and System Roots. Logging copy is there. I don't know why. I'll just click delete reference.

Okay, so right here I don't have any password saved except for home.comcast.net. I'm not sure why that is saved. Basically, you can double-click on a password, check show password, and type your keychain password.

Now, what is your keychain password? It's the encryption password on your physical keychain. My keychain is called Log In. That's the default keychain, and by default, it unlocks when you log in because the password for the keychain is the same as your user password.

So I'm gonna show you basically how to create a new keychain or how to change a keychain password or how to use your keychain securely to store notes and stuff like that.

So let me just demonstrate a few things. Right here is, here's login, but there's also a menu bar on Keychain Access: File, New Password Item, New Secure Note, New Keychain. I'll just click, um, New Keychain for now and we're gonna create a keychain called Mac Head.

So now I'll click Create, and it'll ask me to enter our keychain password. The longer the password, the more secure. I'll just make it 20 digits long, so fine password. So okay, and so right here is Mac has an on keychain.

You might also notice this little lock, and you can click this to lock that. It encrypts the keychain and locks the keychain down so that no program can read even what's on the keychain or the usernames or anything, especially the passwords, without you typing in the keychain password.

So if you lock Login, then you open something that requires a password, I don't know, then it will ask you to enter your keychain password for whatever keychain it's trying to read the password from. If it's the Login keychain pack started, it's a 1 2 3 4 5 in allies. You should type in 1 2 3 4 5.

You can also right-click on it and change password for Login. I'll just type my password, and this is your user password. Then you type your current keychain password and a new password and confirm the new password. Yes, okay, okay.

Now it's automatically unlocked, and I can just lock it again for maximum security. When it is locked, like I said, no other program could read your keychain. Same with this: I'll just unlock it and type the keychain password.

Okay, and now we can go up to File, New Password Item on any selected keychain. I'll just go back to Login, and now I'll show this on Mac Kids.

One can go up to File, New Password Item, New Secure Note, New Keychain. First, I'll make a password. So Keychain Item Name: I'll just make it for Mac Kids One. No one account name: Mac Heads on. No one password: Joe. It's a very weak password.

Okay, so right here is the password. You can double-click it and check show password and type your keychain password or you actually see the password. Any Wi-Fi passwords you type in here will also appear in Keychain Access.

So I'll just demonstrate this to you by connecting to my wireless network called Homer. Called it Homer from The Simpsons. Yes, and now I'll type my password, and it's going to connect me.

And it's gonna ask me for my keychain password because I checked off remember password in my keychain, and that's for the Login keychain. As you can see in my Login keychain, the password is really long. There we go.

And right here in Login now it placed Homer Airport network password. I can uncheck and type my keychain password, and right here is my Wi-Fi password. It happens to be Joe Blow. I don't know why I made it that; I just did.

I can also delete that, but I'm not going to; I can delete this all so I'll just click delete and delete it. Also, right down here I can delete this keychain.

But let me also show you how to put a keychain on an external hard drive. Alright, here's my bun to hard drive; I just have wired up called the bunch you up one two HD and say I want to put my keychain on that for saving.

If I connect this hard drive to another Mac, I can go into my home folder, open up Library in my own folder, go down to Keychains. This and just open up Keychains. Right here is my Login keychain. Right there, it'll open up with Keychain Access automatically, and it's locked and it's highly encrypted.

So if you open it up, but say a text editor, I'll just use Taco HTML, you can't read it. It's unreadable in any way; you cannot read it. It's encrypted. But what you want to do is, if this is really encrypted, you can copy it, paste it into one to HD. Right there's Log-in teaching.

Now I can open Login keychain from any computer. My Login keychain will be here. This is it. Actually, I'm not sure which one is it; you can also make a keychain; make am. Yeah, anyway, I'll just delete this.

And now I'll open teaching access again and it won't recognize the keychain anymore. But so that's what a keychain is. A keychain is a secure data store. Basically, it stores information like passwords and secure notes.

And actually, let me just demonstrate this. If you have a keychain selected, you got the File, New Secure Note, then you type the item name. I'll just call it Joe, and then you type if the note is Joe.

Click Add. Here's my secure note, and the note will be encrypted. You have to check show note and type your keychain password in order to display the note.

Okay, and so this is another way you can make a password file in here in your keychain. So that's just how to basically secure any password or anything and access your passwords that you may have stored with the password for your keychain.

Obviously, in Tao to transfer keychains to other drives and open them on other computers. So, um, thank you for watching Mac Heads on. Subscribe and goodbye.