PinBox - Quick Start Guide

 

Version 1, Release 2 (V1R2)

 

Safe portable storage for your secret passwords!

 

Contents

This guide includes step by step instructions for basic usage scenarios.  These scenarios represent everything you need to do to make effective use of PinBox.  A separate User’s Guide is available which provides much more complete information about the design and optional features as well as the nature of the problem that it addresses.  The scenarios described herein are -

 

·       Installation

·       Invocation

·       Create a New Account

·       Sign-on to an Account

·       Change Boot Password

·       General Usage Tips

 

PinBox provides an easy way to securely store and subsequently retrieve your growing list of passwords.  Furthermore, it can travel with you and is ready to use on almost any available computer.  It even provides robotically assisted logon that can prevent you from having to type in user names and passwords on many web sites.  You don’t need to know very much about it before you can start obtaining the benefits.

 

Installation

PinBox is designed to be portable.  Therefore, there is no Windows installer.  You simply extract (unpack) the distribution archive (file) to a device that supports output.

 

The steps involved are as follows:

  1. Launch the distributed file (e.g., PinBoxVnRm.exe, where n = version number and m = release number)
  2. When prompted, specify the location where the extracted files, which include your encrypted database, will be stored.  About 30MB of available space is sufficient.  The only requirement is that the device subsequently permits output to be written to it (i.e., do not specify a rewritable CD/DVD device).  A flash drive is a good choice if you want portability.

Invocation

After installation the root directory of the PinBox system is located within the file system on the device selected during installation (see above).  The name should begin with “PinBox” and may have a suffix which indicates the specific version and release of the software.  For example, if the files are extracted to “D:\” the name of this directory would be “D:\PinBoxV1R2” for version number 1 and release number 2 of the software.

 

The steps involved are as follows:

  1. Navigate to the “exec” subdirectory within the PinBox root directory.
  2. Launch the “StartNormal.js” startup script.
  3. When prompted enter the correct value for the Boot Password.  The value for the default database named “Safe” that is distributed with the system is “password”.  Refer to the Change Boot Password scenario (below) for the steps involved in changing this value.

 

Successful invocation results in the display of the main window used by PinBox.  It consists of a tabbed pane with a menu bar.  The tabs are labeled as follows:

Selecting a tab causes the respective entities to be displayed and enables actions to be performed on them.  The “Safe” database is distributed with a sample value for each entity.  These values can be changed to suite the purposes of the user.

 

Note:  The “StartNormal.js” script depends on a Windows component called Windows Script Host (WSH).  The use of WSH may not be permitted for restricted users.  If launching StartNormal.js results in a Windows failure refer to the Users Guide for remedies.

 

Create a New Account

An account is identified by the combination of a registrar and a user name.  A password is then associated with this unique identifier.  The term registrar is used within PinBox to refer to organization with whom you have registered a user name and password.  PinBox is designed to minimize the amount of data that needs to be entered in order to manage accounts.  As a result the atomic entities used to form accounts can be entered and maintained individually.  The basic idea is that when you create accounts you simply select values for the applicable entities contained within the tables that comprise the PinBox database.  In that, you typically reuse previously entered values.  However, when you first start off there are no values to reuse.  Therefore, the dialog used for adding a new account allows for adding new values for the atomic entities as necessary.

 

The steps for adding a new account are as follows:

  1. With the account tab selected and displayed choose the “Add” action from the “Modify” menu.  There is also a context menu that is raised by “right-clicking” within the pane, which also contains an “Add” action.
  2. A dialog window is opened which reveals a field for each of the 3 atomic entities that make up an account.  Your first choice is to select an available value for each entity from the related drop down list.  If the value you need is not available then you may add it to the database by selecting the button labeled “New”.
  3. Selecting one of the “New” buttons causes the dialog window used for managing the respective entity (i.e., user-id, registrar, or password) to be opened.  Enter the desired values for the corresponding entity.  When finished select the button labeled “OK’ on the Add > Account dialog to commit the newly defined account to the database.  White space (i.e., blank and certain control characters) are not permitted for entity values.  Likewise each added entity value must be unique from previously added values for the same entity.  Other relevant factors for each entity are as follows:

·       User-id names – Insofar as case is considered when determining uniqueness there is an option which causes the characters to be folded to lower case.  This prevents the accidental creation of entities whose values differ only by case.  Consult the PinBox Users Guide to learn how to modify this option should case distinction be desired.

·       Registrar – A value of your choosing that is used to designate an organization with whom you have registered a user name.  This value is passed to the default web browser when the “Browse” action is selected.  Therefore a URL may be very desirable.  The protocol prefix (i.e., http://) can be omitted.  This can improve effectiveness when sorting on registrar.  As with user-id names the characters entered are folded to lower case by default.  This is not a problem for the hostname portion of the URL but could be problematic for directory names on Unix based servers.  Consult the PinBox Users Guide to learn how to modify the option that controls folding to lower case should case sensitivity be desired.

·       Passwords – Case is preserved.  When the dialog box opens the value is initialized with a randomly generated value.  This makes it very easy to assign very strong passwords.  Simply enter your preferred value should you prefer to use a value different from the one that is generated.

 

Each entity allows the entry of an optional description field.  It is often preferred to leave the value blank.  The purpose of this field is to allow you to characterize the entity.  This may be especially useful for registrars but is less useful for reused entities such as user names and passwords.  With respect to passwords it may be desirable for tagging strong passwords (e.g., randomly generated values) that would not normally be reused and whose value is meaningless.  This description is useful when displaying the set of entities using the respective tabbed pane because you can sort the list on the description field and thereby group all the entities with the same characteristics together.

 

The description field can be edited (revised) anytime.  Therefore, it is not very important to enter such information when you only have a few entities in your database.  As you use PinBox and begin to accumulate a larger number of entities you may find this capability more useful.

 

  1. Repeat the previous step for each new entity that is needed for the account being created.  Once a value has been selected for each of the 3 atomic entities select the “OK” button in the Add > Account” dialog window.

 

Sign-on to an Account

PinBox assists you by streamlining the process involved in accessing web sites that require you to sign-on.  This assistance is provided by 3 features as follows:

 

·       Browse - The “Browse” action can be selected either from the menu bar of the main window or from the context menu that is raised by “right-clicking” with the mouse.  To “Browse” use the steps that follow:

  1. Select either the Account or Registrars tab.
  2. Select the row from the displayed pane that corresponds to the desired URL (i.e., a URL was assigned for the value of the registrar entity).
  3. Either “right-click” with the mouse and select the “Browse” action or select the “Browse” action from the “Robot” menu to launch the default browser with the corresponding URL.

 

·       Logon – The “Logon” action has the affect of robotically simulating typing on the keyboard for the purpose of entering the corresponding user-id name and password into the field where the cursor is positioned on the previously active window.  To use this feature be sure the applicable account is selected.  This has likely already been done if the “Browse” action was previously used.  Either “right-click” with the mouse and select the “Logon” action or select the “Logon” action from the “Robot” menu to perform a robotic logon.

 

·       Copy&Paste or Drag&Drop – The value of any selected cell can be copied to the clipboard or dragged to a target field.  This is especially helpful, when the “Logon” action (described above) is not applicable, for accurately transferring (without re-entering) the values for password and user-id name to the corresponding input fields presented by the target application.  Copy&Paste actions are performed by using the conventional keys assigned by Windows which are as follows:

 

Change Boot Password

With Pinbox the Boot Password is the one, possibly only, password you need to remember.  The only way to gain access to the contents of your PinBox is to enter the correct value.  Therefore, the strength of this password determines the amount of protection afforded to all of the passwords contained in your PinBox.  Refer to the User’s Guide for more information about the Boot Password.

 

The steps for changing the Boot Password are the following:

1.     With a database open, select the menu item “File>New>Change PW”

2.     When prompted, enter the current value for the Boot Password and select “OK”

3.     Enter the new value when prompted to “Specify Password” and re-enter the same value to “Confirm Password” and then select “OK”.  The option used to specify the minimum length is initially set to 8 characters and the value is case sensitive.

4.     A progress indicator is displayed while the database encryption is underway.

 

General usage tips

Refer to the PinBox Users Guide for greater detail regarding all of the supported features.  However, there are a few tips that may be helpful to describe herein.  They are as follows:

1.     The database management software is self contained within PinBox.  Therefore, only one instance of a database can be open at the same time.  PinBox attempts to ensure that only one instance is running at the same time and it displays an error message when you attempt to start it while it is already running.  Since you will likely encounter situations where PinBox was not closed properly (i.e., system crash, power failure, etc.) it is possible that you may see this message even when PinBox is not already running.  When you know that there is not another instance running you can circumvent this problem by deleting the file named “PinBox.Objects” that is located in the “exec” subdirectory of the PinBox root directory.  Note:  Should you want to run multiple instances of PinBox to simultaneously open different databases please refer to the PinBox Users Guide for setup information.

2.     The information displayed by PinBox can be sorted into either ascending or descending order with respect to any data column.  This is controlled by selecting column headers on any of the tabbed panes.  The selection has the affect of toggling between natural (unsorted), ascending and descending order.  It should be noted that ascending is the natural order for the columns corresponding to atomic entities (i.e., passwords, user names, registrars).

3.     When PinBox starts the columns on each tabbed pane are ordered horizontally in a predetermined manner.  However, the user can move the columns horizontally to suite their own preference.  This is done by dragging the column headers.

4.     The Java Swing framework does NOT map the “Enter” key to the “OK” button.  Should you prefer to use key strokes rather than clicking on buttons the following keys are mapped as indicated”