Disclaimers

This chapter contains some general information that users of krapplet should be aware of.

Notification icon

Notification icons are an officially deprecated method under GTK3. Use of the notification icon may or may not be abandoned in future releases.

Systray

Krapplet currently will not work properly on desktops that do not provide a systray.

Password generation

The generation of the password makes use of Python’s random functions. These random functions rely on operating system features, typically the current time in fractions of seconds, or when available from a random device like /dev/urandom in Linux, which seems better. Even better would be if there is a hardware random number generator available and used by the operating system. How Python’s random function works therefore depends on the Python interpretor, the system configuration, and the hardware.

The generated secret may not be good enough for real cryptographic purposes. Whether it is good enough for password generation is left to users of krapplet to decide.

Clipboard usage

Krapplet can copy secrets to the system clipboard, allowing a user to paste a secret in an input field, seemingly a secure way since bystanders cannot see what is being copied. However, please be weary of clipboard managers maintaining a clipboard history and therefore can reveal everything that has been copied to it, including passwords. Note that krapplet clears the clipboard after a key window is closed to prevent a password lingering in the clipboard, and getting accidentally pasted in a place where others might see it.

Swap

Memory constrained systems might swap krapplet out to a storage device. Encrypt your swap device or swap file to prevent hackers from harvesting secrets from it.