Chrome Team Working On Browser-Based Password Picking


In the future, you may never have to pick a password again, as Google’s Chrome may not only come up with the passwords you use, but also change them if it feels your accounts have been hacked.

The Google Chrome team is working on an interesting feature for upcoming versions of Chrome, namely automatic password generation. Not the bland password generation that’s been a feature of many applications for years — this would involve Chrome itself picking the passwords, and, where it felt it was necessary, changing them. You’d never even know what they were.

The Chromium development pages have the details of Chrome’s current work towards such a goal, noting that while the long-term goal is a single browser sign-in along with OpenID, that’s some years away. The idea with a Chrome-generated password is that because you don’t know it, phishing attempts can’t work on you. It’s logical enough to a certain extent, but does face some problems; the site notes that detecting login pages can be tricky, and any site that doesn’t accept autocompletes — most banking sites shouldn’t, for example — won’t work with the currently mooted approach.


What do you think? Would you be happy handing over complete control of your passwords to your browser? [Chromium Project via Wired]


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