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