US 12,306,928 B2
Password manager accessory
Steven Lee Fisher-Stawinski, Buffalo Grove, IL (US); Shikhar Kwatra, San Jose, CA (US); Moitreyee Mukherjee-Roy, San Jose, CA (US); and Scott E. Schneider, Rolesville, NC (US)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Mar. 15, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/201,431.
Prior Publication US 2022/0292179 A1, Sep. 15, 2022
Int. Cl. G06F 21/45 (2013.01); G06F 3/04886 (2022.01); H04L 9/40 (2022.01)
CPC G06F 21/45 (2013.01) [G06F 3/04886 (2013.01); H04L 63/083 (2013.01)] 17 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. An electronic apparatus comprising:
a computing device with an electronic interface, the computing device including a processing device and a local password manager client communicatively coupled to the processing device;
a password manager hardware accessory, with a virtual keyboard module comprising instructions and a password manager module comprising instructions, coupled to the computing device via a universal serial bus (USB) port on the computing device and the USB port communicatively coupled to the electronic interface, wherein the password manager is configured to be responsive only to the local password manager client;
a password vault storing an inventory of passwords residing in a cloud-based computing environment communicatively coupled to the local password manager, wherein the local password manager is configured to collect a password from the inventor of passwords and transmit the password to the password manager module; and
the password manager module configured to:
transmit the password to the virtual keyboard module for converting to one or more keystrokes by the virtual keyboard module;
convert, by the virtual keyboard module, the password to the one or more keystrokes;
transmit, via the electronic interface, each of the one or more keystrokes to a respective logon field of an application on the computing device; and
discard the password, wherein the password is not stored on the password manager hardware accessory.