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