An extension to enable passwords and form logins to be stored in gnome-keyring

This extension replaces the default password manager in both Firefox and
Thunderbird with an implementation which stores the passwords in Gnome keyring.

This allows for safe storage of passwords without prompting for password after
Firefox or Thunderbird has been started.

Notice: gnome-keyring stores the passwords encrypted on permanent storage but
it keeps passwords in memory without encryption. As a result, other programs
with access to memory space of gnome-keyring (namely debuggers and applications
running as root) may be able to extract the passwords. The same applies to
internal Firefox and Thunderbird implementations so use of this extension
should be any less secure than the default implementation. The passwords are
decrypted once the gnome keyring has been opened (if a gnome keyring has
identical password to your login password, it will be automatically opened once
you login). Your passwords are stored only in encrypted form any time you are
not logged in.

some basic infos about the extension:

there’s no migration facility atm, if you move from ff integrated
password manager to gnome keyring you’ll need to save all the passwords
again. saved password in ff remain untouched, so remember to delete
them when the add-on is inactive if you’re decided to move. if you
set a master password, when you click on preferences→security→saved
passwords→ show passwords you still get asked for it, even if gnome
keyring is active. you can change the keyring in which passwords are saved
by creating the preference item extensions.gnome-keyring.keyringName. The
default is mozilla. Note that password will be retrieved from every
unlocked keyring because the gnome-keyring API doens’t provide a way
to search in just one keyring. You’ll find some more infos on bugzilla
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=309807)



Build dependencies:
 * libgnome-keyring-devel
 * xulrunner-devel


Tested on:
 - Ubuntu 10.04 with Firefox 3.6.7 by <[email protected]>
 - Ubuntu 10.10 with Firefox 3.6.12 and Thunderbird 3.1.6 (see bugs)
 - Arch Linux
 - Gentoo Linux with Firefox 3.6.12 and Thunderbird 3.1.6


Known Bugs:
- Problems on Ubuntu 8.10 installation with Thundebird 3.1.6:
    It is necessary to copy libxul.so and libxpcom.so from
    /usr/lib/xulrunner-*/ into /usr/lib/tunderbird-*/ folder. See issue #4.
    I'am thankful for any hints why this Problem exists. And status
    on different distributions (no problem on gentoo).

--
#4: https://github.com/mdlavin/firefox-gnome-keyring/issues/#issue/4