My code needs to keep the encrypted version of a user's password in memory. Since we require the text version of the password SecretKey makes the most sense to encrypt and decrypt the password.



My question is should I keep the simple API getPassword to call the decryption algorithm and return the plaintext or require that the key is passed to the getPassword method or at least a decryption interface? The latter would limit the ability of a malicious program from traversing the code revealing all passwords or programmer's error.

I would prefer to keep this a certificate free implementation.

thanks,
Steven