secret

Keep your little secrets.

Compatibility

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

Features

secret is the simplest secret store you can think of:

• Requires only one file ~/.secret that you can share publicly without fear.
• No configuration. 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 (on bash only) once the agent is activated.
• Supports unstored secrets. Derived from some simple keys and a passphrase.
• Supports multiple passphrases. Not super user-friendly but nice to have.
• Depends only on the libhydrogen library.
• Small, simple and non obfuscated C code. Well, I hope so :)

Build and install

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.

Currently, bash completion is not installed. Download the file argz.sh then:

$ . argz.sh
$ complete -F _argz secret

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 secret
    set        Set a new secret
    renew      Regenerate an existing secret
    reset      Update an existing secret
    pass       Derivate a new 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 bs=1 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 :)

---

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