Handling Passwords with Security and Reliability in
Background Processes
Don Libes
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Abstract
Traditionally, background automation of interactive processes
meant giving up security and reliability. With the advent of
software such as Expect for controlling interactive processes,
it has become possible to improve reliability and security with
relative ease.
This paper reviews the reliability aspects but focuses primarily
on the security aspects, presenting several non-obvious
techniques for dealing with passwords and other sensitive
information in background processes. These techniques require
no changes to existing programs and no new security systems are
necessary. With the appropriate tools and examples, these
techniques can be applied with surprisingly little effort to a
wide variety of problems.
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