Factotum (software)

This article is about the software. For other uses, see Factotum (disambiguation).

Factotum is a password management and authentication protocol negotiation virtual file system for Plan 9 from Bell Labs. When a program wants to authenticate to a service, it requests a key from Factotum. If Factotum does not have the key, it requests it from the users either via the terminal window or auth/fgui which is then stored in volatile memory. Factotum then authenticates to the service on behalf of the program. For long-term storage, keys are usually stored in secstore or in an encrypted file.^[1][2]

auth/fgui adding a key to factotum

Factotum was introduced in August 2002, at that year's USENIX in Berkeley, California.^[3][4]

See also

• List of password managers
• Cryptography