secret

A simple and tiny tool that will help you keep your little secrets.

Features

secret is the simplest secret store you can think of. But it does have some interesting features:

• Requires only one file ~/.secret that you can share publicly without fear.
• No configuration. No directory. Get back your file and you're done.
• Secret names (usually hostname, mail, login, etc.) are also encrypted.
• A secret agent that only trusts subprocesses. Not all the processes of the same user!
• Secret names completion is available after calling the secret agent.
• Supports unstored secrets. Derived from some simple keys and a passphrase.
• Supports multiple passphrases. A confirmation is requested for each new passphrase.
• Depends only on the libhydrogen library.
• Small, simple and non obfuscated C code. Well, I hope so :)

Security

The main goal is to have secret working on all architectures and to make it very simple to audit.

Luckily, permutation-based cryptography has arrived and makes it possible to achieve this goal with very little code. In 2020, using a bloated library full of CVEs will not have been reasonable considering the major advances in this field.

Only one cryptographic building block is used, the Gimli permutation. All cryptographic operations are derived from this permutation and implemented in the libhydrogen library.

Build and install

This should work on a wide variety of architectures and POSIX systems. It was successfully tested on Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and MacOS.

Clone the repository recursively:

$ git clone https://github.com/angt/secret --recursive
$ cd secret

Then, run as root:

# make install

As usual, you can customize the destination with DESTDIR and prefix.

Tab completion

Tab completion works with bash and yash (zsh is also supported if you enable bashcompinit). Unfortunately, it doesn't work out of the box, you have to setup it manually. Luckily, it's super easy!

Download the file corresponding to your shell:

• argz.bash.
• argz.yash.

Then you can add these lines in your .bashrc (or .zshrc):

. argz.bash
complete -F _argz secret

Or in your .yashrc:

. argz.yash

function completion/secret {
    command -f completion//reexecute argz
}

Completion for secrets is only available in a trusted shell. See below.

Commands

Available commands:

init       Initialize secret for the current user
list       List all secrets for a given passphrase
show       Print a secret
new        Generate a new random secret
set        Set a new secret
renew      Regenerate an existing secret
update     Update an existing secret
pass       Print a deterministic secret
agent      Run a process in a trusted zone
version    Show version

All secrets are encrypted in the file ~/.secret. You can use a different file with the SECRET_STORE environment variable:

$ env SECRET_STORE=<FILE> secret ...

Examples

Initialize secret for the current user:

$ secret init

Add a new randomly generated secret:

$ secret new test
Passphrase:
^>f.8%]_zoN^jSi0CO_{(yYY5

Show the secret:

$ secret show test
Passphrase:
^>f.8%]_zoN^jSi0CO_{(yYY5

Derive a deterministic (a.k.a. unstored) secret:

$ secret pass me@domain.com
Passphrase:
a`4$B2mJ=|"HD?b4:/y"?wOaQ

Subkeys are also supported, this allows to update your secret in a clean way:

$ secret pass me@domain.com 2020
Passphrase:
F"1j;-X]t.Pi>.xf5hG,]dUMz

Storing binary secrets is supported:

$ dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=32 2>/dev/null | secret set mykey
Passphrase:

Then, use a pipe to get it:

$ secret show mykey | xxd
Passphrase:
00000000: 0ee9 cdb3 de0a 3e71 b623 726d 5d7e eb23  ......>q.#rm]~.#
00000010: 5b43 a458 3fb7 3b96 ea9b 6e47 d302 cae7  [C.X?.;...nG....

Start a trusted zone:

$ secret agent
Passphrase:

Now, the passphrase is not requested and completion fully works!

If you don't use bash but still want completion, run secret agent bash or (much better) send a PR to add support for your shiny shell :)

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For feature requests and bug reports, please create an issue.