Passwordless vault for password security
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsRichard Victor Kisley, Juan F. Vargas, Mark E. Maresh
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Passwords are repeatably generated for selected applications in a passwordless vault by applying an algorithm to certain stored application-specific information and a personal identification number, or PIN, provided by a requesting user. Upon authentication, the user requests a password for a selected application and enters an appropriate PIN. The password for the selected application is generated upon request rather than retrieved from storage. In that way, passwords themselves are not available upon mere access to the passwordless vault, which contains the stored application-specific information.
Claims6
A computer-implemented method for setting up a passwordless vault, the computer-implemented method comprising:
- receiving account parameters of a user account, including password rules and a user-defined password;
- generating, by a vault algorithm, a unique key for the user account;
- storing the password rules and the unique key in a passwordless vault;
- creating a generated password using the unique key, a character block of binary data, and a set of character tables, the generated password satisfying the password rules;
- performing a binary XOR operation on the user-defined password with the generated password to generate a password mask;
- and
- storing the password mask for the account in the passwordless vault;
- and
- completing setup of the passwordless vault for the account.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.