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en | Tips | Open Source Safer

luckyrat edited this page Jan 14, 2013 · 1 revision

Open source security software like KeePass and KeeFox is more secure than closed source alternatives.

Many experts state that public and open security systems are far less likely to be compromised than their closed source equivalents. There is some debate about the advantages and disadvantages of security code being available in the open but the small number of rigorous studies so far performed generally support the prevailing expert opinion.[1]

One important reason boils down to "security through obscurity is no security at all", i.e. if your security relies on keeping the inner workings of your application secret it is likely that your security is already broken.

By definition, one cannot know whether a closed source security product is genuinely secure or purely secure through obscurity; with open source you can be certain that security by obscurity is not used. There are many factors that affect the security of an application and the fact that KeeFox and KeePass are open source does not automatically make them secure. However, one of the other benefits of open source is that if (when?) a security problem is discovered, it can be fixed within minutes by any interested developer and then made available to all users shortly after that.

There is more on this topic on the official KeeFox website.

[1]: e.g. http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2004/12/66022

WARNING!

OLD INFORMATION

The information in this Wiki is out of date.

It is only of interest if you are using the old add-on called KeeFox in a very old (insecure) version of Firefox or other browsers based on the old Firefox XUL technology.

Read the manual for Kee and KeeBird instead.

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