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Pidgin Master Password Patch

Pidgin stores the passwords of the accounts in plain text in a xml file (i.e. if you have enabled the "save password" option for the accounts). Anyone who can get read access to this xml file (accounts.xml) will know the passwords of all the accounts for which you have chosen to save the password.

This patch (written by Dooglus) allows you to have a master password for encrypting the passwords of the individual accounts. This is similar to the master password feature provided by Thunderbird / Firefox (and I think this also uses the same encryption method as that used by Thunderbird / Firefox).

Source Installation (in Linux)

Installing Pidgin dependencies

If using Debian Lenny, you can install the dependencies using apt-get:

# apt-get install cdbs debhelper libgtk2.0-dev libxss-dev libmeanwhile-dev libgadu-dev libnss3-dev tcl8.4-dev tk8.4-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgtkspell-dev libltdl3-dev libperl-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libzephyr-dev libxml2-dev libebook1.2-dev libedata-book1.2-dev libcamel1.2-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev dbus python libavahi-client-dev libavahi-glib-dev libxml-parser-perl libncursesw5-dev libsasl2-dev xsltproc doxygen libsqlite3-dev libsilc-1.1-2-dev

Alternatively, if you have the source repositories enabled, you can just run:

# apt-get build-dep pidgin

Installing Patch dependencies

# apt-get install libnss3-dev libnspr4-dev

Applying Patch

Download the pidgin source (pidgin-x.x.x.tar.bz2) from here and the master password patch (pidgin-x.x.x_master-password.patch) from below. Extract the source and apply the patch.

# tar -xvjf pidgin-x.x.x.tar.bz2
# cd pidgin-x.x.x
# patch -p1 <../pidgin-x.x.x_master-password.patch

Compiling and Installing Pidgin

Once the dependencies are installed and patch is applied, pidgin can be compiled and installed as usual.

# ./configure --prefix=/opt/pidgin
# make
# make install

After pidgin is installed, you can run it using:

# /opt/pidgin/bin/pidgin

and set the master password through Tools -> Preferences -> Security.

Windows Binaries

Following the instructions given at http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/BuildingWinPidgin, I was able to build windows binaries. Also note that GTK+ for windows has to be installed as a prerequisite and it can be downloaded here. If you are using Win9x/Me, download and install GTK+ version "2.6.10 Rev A".

pidgin-2.3.1_win32.zip
pidgin-2.4.1_win32.zip
pidgin-2.6.2-win32-bin.zip
pidgin-2.6.2.exe
pidgin-2.6.2-no-gtk.exe
pidgin-2.6.2-debug.exe

Patches

pidgin-2.3.1_master-password.patch
pidgin-2.4.0_master-password.patch
pidgin-2.4.1_master-password.patch
pidgin-2.4.2_master-password.patch
pidgin-2.4.3_master-password.patch
pidgin-2.5.4_master-password.patch
pidgin-2.6.2_master-password.patch

It should be noted that these patches might work for other pidgin versions as well. While patching the source, if any of the files are not patched properly, the failed hunks are put in a .rej file for inspection and the rejected changes can be merged manually.

References

http://dooglus.rincevent.net/gaim/
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/fix-for-master-password-expose-for-pidgin.html

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Comments

Hi Thanks alot.
Also i will like to add that the pidgin-2.5.4_master-password.patch worked with pidgin 2.5.8 source.

Thanks again

The patch fails to apply with Pidgin 2.6.2 (total of 8 hunks fail).

Any plan to update for Pidgin 2.6.2?

Added patch and windows binaries for Pidgin 2.6.2

All the download links to the patches and Windows binaries are giving a 404 error.

Thanks for updating the patch and building the binaries. Hope you can get the links sorted soon.

The links seems to be working fine if you access my website using the url http://rahul.amaram.name/ rather than https://gator1155.hostgator.com/~rahul/drupal/ . Kindly let me know if you still face the error.

Thanks, rahul.... yes the links from your website work.

I'm considering deploying this patch to over 10,000 users. Would it be difficult to modify the patch so that a master password is required to be set in order to save any passwords? i.e., master password is mandatory. Maybe as a patch to the patch? ;-)

nice work! big thanks for the windows binaries^^

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