Barcode Scanner Password Manager
Table of Contents
There’s a Windows PC at work that, for some reason, requires its bitlocker recovery key after every reboot. It doesn’t reboot that often, but entering a 48 digit long key by hand gets really old fast. Especially after you enter in the third time, because of course you mistyped something in the first two tries.
I work in the Production Test team at Zivid, and we’re the team that is responsible for all the tests and infrastructure that is required for production of our cameras. In the production line, there are many instances where a barcode scanner is used for tracking of various things.
So natuarlly, someone in my team came up with the brilliant idea of making the bitlocker key into a QR code, and then simply scan it with a barcode scanner. No typing required and zero errors!
After this, we started joking that we should print all the password that we have on 1password, and instead walk around with a book of QR codes and a barcode scanner.
I hope it goes without saying that this is not recommended.
Generate a QR password safely #
Like I mentioned above, if you decide to replicate this, you should never use an online service to generate your QR code!
Instead, you can generate a QR code locally using the qrcode
python library. It will install a script entrypoint allowing you to simply call:
qr "hello"
And it will print out a QR directly in your terminal using unicode Block Elements.
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