An Inside Look at Passbolt’s First Hackathon

For three epic days, seven teams battled it out, but only one emerged as the ultimate champion. That’s pretty much all you need to know. ​​Get ready for an overview of passbolt’s first-ever hackathon — a thrilling event that showcased the brains, brawn, and banter of all the teams involved.

From March 29th to April 3rd, the teams competed with a range of projects aimed at making passbolt even more awesome for its users. It all began with everyone submitting their projects. The only rules? Create value, have a diverse team, and make it achievable.

Let’s get to it and take a peek at what the passbolt team worked on during this hackathon extravaganza. Starting with the winners, so break out your confetti cannons and attempt your best drum rolls.

Here’s a full video wrap up, but if you read on you’ll find the presentation for each project is linked too:

Let’s get to it and take a peek at what the passbolt team worked on during this hackathon extravaganza. Starting with the winners, so break out your confetti cannons and attempt your best drum rolls.

The Victors: The Auditors — Audit Logs For Admins

The Auditors won first prize with their project, which stood out for its innovative features, seamless integration and potential for future development. The project? To provide a way.

This project addressed the challenges of accessing passbolt’s audit logs. Currently audit logs are stored in a database, providing a layer of difficulty for admins trying to monitor user activity. The auditors built an elegant solution to make the process easier and address the growing need for easy-to-use monitoring within passbolt.

During the hackathon, The Auditors developed an additional workspace that gives access to necessary information. The team went a few steps further by including filters, so only relevant results are shown. And to increase their chances of winning, they added pagination by default. Now admins will never have to worry about being overwhelmed by information.

There’s more to come, but The Auditors laid down a great foundation for the future of this feature. Learn more about this project by reading their hackathon documentation. or by watching their presentation at the closing ceremonies.

The Accessibiliteam — Passbolt Accessibility Improvements

Passbolt is currently not optimised for people who are hard-of-hearing or visually impaired, this lack of accessibility doesn’t allow all passbolt users to have the same experience. The passbolt Interface should be an equal and inclusive platform, designed with considerations for all users.

Taking a comprehensive approach, this project evaluated every phase of the passbolt deployment: design, development, and testing. Digital inclusivity and accessibility are key to passbolt’s commitment to interoperability. And everyone who uses passbolt should have access to the same level of service.

The Accessibiliteam guided this project using the highest standards for digital accessibility. Throughout the hackathon, they updated components for easier keyboard navigation, added colour variables, customised focus outlines, implemented aria labels, and so much more. In addition, the team activated VoiceOver accessibility for all buttons and integrated accessibility validation for development.

The Accessibiliteam hasn’t just taken passbolt’s accessibility a leap forward, but they’ve also created an action plan for further accessibility improvements. There’s a lot more to come, so stay tuned for updates. Learn more about this project by reading their hackathon documentation. or by watching their presentation at the closing ceremonies.

The Old Farts — Role Based Access Control

Not wanting to miss out on all the fun of the first hackathon, the founders created their team, aptly named The Old Farts. They took on the project of creating a role-based access control (RBAC) system that would allow administrators to control virtually all the actions that take place within passbolt.

RBAC allows administrators to dictate which features are visible to normal users and which are hidden. Why is this important? It reduces the risk of unauthorised access and protects against data breaches by ensuring that only the right people have access to the right resources and information. This project allowed the team to define dynamic rules for more nuanced policies.

For the hackathon, The Old Farts implemented a user-friendly admin panel with settings for the passbolt UI and API. Using role-based access controls, admins can control access to everything a user can access in Passbolt, including importing, exporting, previewing passwords, copying passwords, viewing descriptions, viewing comments, viewing password activity, using folders, filtering, using tags, sharing, changing password generators, viewing users, viewing groups, updating groups, and even viewing the panel itself.

There’s a lot to look forward to with RBAC, including the addition of dynamic rules and added granularity with the access controls. Learn more about this project by reading their hackathon documentation. or by watching their presentation at the closing ceremonies.

The A Team — Passbolt Terminal User Interface

While the A Team technically cheated by starting their hackathon early, the rest of the teams didn’t blame them. Taking on a whole terminal user interface in less than three days isn’t all that reasonable. The main goal of The A Team was to create a Terminal User Interface (TUI) for users to manage their passbolt accounts without ever having to open a browser. But, an added perk of the TUI is that it makes you look cool in front of their friends…

While the TUI is designed for users who feel comfortable manoeuvring through the terminal, it’s a valuable addition for DevOps professionals who want to embed passbolt on their pipelines. The A Team’s focus for this project is allowing users to read, create, and delete passwords from the comfort of their terminal, making them feel like true hackers.

The passbolt TUI was built with rust to prioritise performance and memory safety, allowing you to perform complex operations quickly and efficiently. Plus, you can customise the interface to meet your specific needs or just make it look even cooler. As with all things passbolt, the TUI is completely customizable and extensible, so you can integrate it with other tools in your workflow.

There’s no shortage of how badass you’ll look when you start using the passbolt TUI. You’re looking forward to it, admit it. Learn more about this project by reading their hackathon documentation. or by watching their presentation at the closing ceremonies.

Nuts Team — Password Policies

The Nuts team didn’t disappoint. They took on the challenge of improving password policies and returned on presentation day with an impressive project. The Nuts team delivered a feature that allows administrators to set a minimal entropy for passphrases, passwords in the database, and password generated within passbolt.

The password policy feature gives teams and organisations greater control and visibility over the password database to ensure their resources meet a minimum level of quality. These enhancements will significantly improve the security of passbolt by giving administrators the ability to take control of their password standards and set their own policies.

In addition, the added indicators will allow administrators to monitor the current status of their sensitive information. They’ll be able to see if a password is insecure, compromised or has poor hygiene. Passbolt is committed to giving users the tools they need to take control of their security. Password policies are another step towards putting all the power in your hands.

In the future, Passbolt has plans for the further development of password policies. They’ll have more granularity on the basis of roles, groups, or folders. Learn more about this project by reading their hackathon documentation. or by watching their presentation at the closing ceremonies.

Honourable Mention

Of course, all of these teams have done amazing work. But, there are two additional teams (Team Euro Dollars and The AccesSEOptimizators) that worked on marketing, sales, SEO, website accessibility, and content. You won’t hear much about their work since it’s not a feature to be released. But, rest assured that what they worked on was nothing short of exceptional. You may not know it, but you’ve probably seen their efforts in action or will in the near future.

Another honourable mention goes to passbolt’s Head of Design & Comms. The resident design expert, videographer, award coordinator, and photographer of the hackathon. While he may actually only wear one hat, figuratively he wears too many to count. And he’s the one to thank for the amazing video.

A Resounding Success

As you see, passbolt’s first ever hackathon was an absolute success. The brains, brawn, and banter were all on full display. There was no shortage of fantastic projects to take passbolt to the next level. The teams are even talking about making this a quarterly thing.

From role based access controls and accessibility improvements to audit logs and terminal user inferences, the teams’ creativity and hard work really paid off. And while we’re giving you a sneak peak into the hackathon projects, there’s still more to come. Follow along for the eventual release of all the features developed during the hackathon.

Overall the hackathon was a blast. Hope you enjoyed reading the behind the scenes look. What’s your favourite project? Comment below or vote for your favourite in the passbolt community:

• Audit Log Admin Panel
• Role Based Access Control
• Password Policies
• Passbolt Terminal User Interface (TUI)
• Product Accessibility (For people who are hard-of-hearing or visually impaired)