Re: Password entry dialog

FROM : Ron Aldrich
DATE : Thu May 15 23:17:38 2008

On May 15, 2008, at 9:32 AM, Jean-Daniel Dupas wrote:

> All security related API are in the Security Framework(s).
>
> You do not have control of what to user enter in this dialog, its 
> main purpose is to create some "rights" and return them to you if 
> the user is allow to use them.
>
> Usually this dialog is automatically displayed when you query some 
> authorizaton. The cocoa way to do this is to use the 
> "SFAuthorization" class from SecurityFoundation framework.
>
> What do you want to do exactly with this dialog ?


In my case, I'm needing to manage the password for a USB Thumb drive 
that supports a password protected area.  I could implement this by 
itself pretty easily, using the NSSecureTextField, except that I would 
like to go much farther than simple password entry.

I would like provide the ability for users to store the password on 
their keychain.

I would like to utilize the "Password Assistant" for creating passwords.

I found a discussion of the Password Assistant, along with a link to a 
sample program using it at http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?PasswordAssistant

Unfortunately, the methods needed to utilize it would indicate to me 
that Apple considers it to be a private API.

That same discussion also seems to indicate that the password entry 
dialog used in diskimages-helper is also private.

So, unless I'm missing something, it looks like I'm going to be 
rolling my own dialog.

Thanks for your time,

Ron Aldrich
Software Architects, Inc.