computer science

Mitro

Mitro is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mitro rather than just read about it. In short: Mitro was a password manager for individuals and teams that securely saved users' logins, and allowed users to log in and share access. On October 6, 2015, the Mitro service shut down.

Key takeaways

Mitro belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mitro to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mitro from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mitro was a password manager for individuals and teams that securely saved users' logins, and allowed users to log in and share access. On October 6, 2015, the Mitro service shut down. The successor to Mitro is named Passopolis; this is a password manager built upon the Mitro source code.

History Mitro was founded in 2012 by Vijay Pandurangan, Evan Jones, and Adam Hilss. Mitro was backed by $1.2 million in seed funding from Google Ventures and Matrix Partners. On July 31, 2014, the Mitro team announced that they would join Twitter, and at the same time, they released the source code for Mitro on GitHub as free software under GPL. The Mitro team announced the shuttering of the Mitro service with the following timeline:

July 11, 2015: Initial announcement that Mitro would be shut down July 18, 2015: Creating new accounts was disabled August 4, 2015: Final email warning about imminent shutdown was sent September 24, 2015: Mitro become read-only October 6, 2015: Mitro service was turned off October 31, 2015: All Mitro user data permanently destroyed The Mitro team explained the reason for shutting down the service was that the cost and administrative burden to maintain the service in their spare time with their own money had become too much. Given that they could not properly manage a service that people rely on for their security, they needed to stop running it. Former customers were encouraged to move to Passopolis, and independent project that uses the open source Mitro code, or use alternatives such as 1Password, Dashlane, or LastPass. On October 5, 2015, Mitro was officially terminated by Twitter.

Security Mitro uses Google's Keyczar on the server and Keyczar JS implementation on the browser.

Master key is a 128-bit AES key derived using PBKDF2 (SHA-1; 50000 iterations; 16 salt bytes) RSA with 2048-bit keys using OAEP-SHA1 (separate signing and encryption keys) AES with 128-bit keys in CBC mode with PKCS5 padding All encrypted data includes a MAC (HMAC-SHA1)

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mitro

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mitro claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mitro before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mitro ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mitro

In research: Mitro appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mitro in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mitro is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2012 establishments in New York (state), 2014 mergers and acquisitions, American companies established in 2012, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mitro outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mitro in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mitro means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mitro out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mitro in simple terms?

Mitro was a password manager for individuals and teams that securely saved users' logins, and allowed users to log in and share access. On October 6, 2015, the Mitro service shut down.

Why does Mitro matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mitro?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mitro.