Documentation

Obfuscate and encrypt your passwords

Obfuscate and encrypt your passwords¶

Security
Obfuscate and encrypt your passwords

Paw takes security very seriously, and lets you easily store secure information encrypted while obfuscating it on the UI.

Securing your credentials¶

Paw provides different ways of accessing/storing sensitive data:

Data Encryption

You can safely store sensitive data on any input textfield via Secure Dynamic Values; data will be stored encrypted on Paw’s document file.

OS X Keychain

You can access data securely stored on OS X Keychain via Secure Dynamic Values (check Access credentials from the OS X Keychain for more details).

In both cases, data is obfuscated by default on the UI (you can toggle obfuscation at any time).

How to encrypt your credentials¶

Add a dynamic value
Add a dynamic value¶

As an example, let’s add a HTTP Basic Auth Dynamic Value:

In the Headers tab, add an Authorization header.

Right-click on the value field: this will show you the list of the Dynamic Values available.

Under Authorization, pick HTTP Basic Auth.

Enter your credentials
Enter your credentials¶

The green Password field actually has a built-in Secure Dynamic Value, so we can immediately benefit of data encryption.

Type your password directly on the Password field: data will be stored encrypted and shown obfuscated on the UI.

Alternatively, you can click the lock icon on the Password field and switch it to Regular Field to have greater control. You can configure the Secure Dynamic Value to get your credentials from the OS X Keychain instead, or even replace it by previously defined environment variables:

Fields with built-in security¶

The Secure Dynamic Value functionality is built-in on known fields where security is desirable. The following fields are supported out-of-the-box:

Password fields (Basic Auth)

Consumer Secrets (OAuth1)

Token Secrets (OAuth1)

Consumer Private Key (OAuth1 RSA keys)

Client Secret (OAuth2)

Password (OAuth2)

Token (OAuth2)

Refresh Token (OAuth2)

Secret Access Key ID (S3)

How to secure values anywhere¶

A Secure Dynamic Value can be added to any text field to secure sensitive data:

Taking the previous example of HTTP Basic Authentication, we could also make the Username field secure, just by adding a Secure Dynamic Value to it.

Data obfuscation¶

By default, any sensitive piece of information is obfuscated on screen and is not copied to the clipboard.

Dynamic Values

If there is any sensitive data present, UI output will be obfuscated (even if the sensitive data is embedded at a deeper level!).

Code Generators

Sensitive information is obfuscated by default as well, showing ***** Hidden credentials ***** instead of actual data.

Clipboard

No sensitive information is copied to clipboard, unless you deliberately copy it using the Copy Clear Text action.

Paw UI showing obfuscated data (default)

Paw UI showing clear text (data obfuscation disabled by the user)

Use Environment Variables¶

You may need to repeatedly use the same value on your Requests. For that, you can keep those values in Environments, and then use them on your Requests.

Define environment variables using the Secure Dynamic Value.

Point to the previously defined environment variables: right-click on the destination field and click on Environment > Environment Variables > [your_new_variable].

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Read more about Environments and how to use Environments as Reusable Presets.