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Clever uses of pass, the Unix password manager

vitalyparnas.com

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Re: Clever uses of pass, the Unix password manager

#65
post #52

With chezmoi you can use pass to store secrets in your dotfiles, for example if you want to set a secret API token in your ~/.bashrc you can use: export SECRET_API_TOKEN={{ pass "api/token" | quote }} For more info see https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi/blob/master/docs/HOWTO.md... and https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi/blob/master/README.md .

What is the `quote` command that example pipes to? Seems handy but unsurprisingly hard to search for.

I think it's this? I found it by googling "shell quote command".

https://askubuntu.com/questions/354915/quote-command-in-the-...

Re: Clever uses of pass, the Unix password manager

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means password generation takes variable time; this: • opens you up to timing attacks on your PRNG (unlikely to be a problem in real life, but you never know) • might run forever

It has probability 0 of running forever

Assuming a perfect RNG, but PRNGs don't have infinite state. So it's either impossible, or has a finite probability, with a finite probability for each of those cases, for an overall finite (non-zero) subjective probability of it running forever (in ideal program-space; obviously it will never run forever in real life).

Re: Clever uses of pass, the Unix password manager

#67
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I love Jason Donenfeld's work, I tried to use pass and the gpg requirement just rubbed me the wrong way. It's basically just gpg-encrpyting a text file and unlocking that along with some wrappers for basic password manager functionality (I guess most important is clipboard functionality and clearing it automatically after some seconds), but somehow that seems like a weak point to me. It's a whole lot of re…

A few pass-related projects are working on an age[1] backend in addition to gpg. I think gopass already has support for it. [1]: https://age-encryption.org/

Here's one I have been playing with success.

https://github.com/chrisswanda/passage

Re: Clever uses of pass, the Unix password manager

#68
post #12

Using single file for single password entry is very good idea. It's far better than any tools that opens the whole password database at once (KeePass, LastPass, Bitwarden etc). Reason is that you can use e.g. YubiKey to unlock individual entries on touch , this means that you can't lose whole password database on ransomware attack, (unless the ransomware has been there for a very long time). Filippo Valsorda wrote ab…

If you entire encrypted life is stored on a single computer with no backups you really should not be worried about ransomware and start worrying about things that will actually happen, like having your laptop stolen, or accidentally deleting something, or needing to replace your storage device.

Re: Clever uses of pass, the Unix password manager

#69
post #62

Recently used pass to share passwords between colleagues (3 in total). Files are encrypted against three different GPG public keys and shared via Git. Works well enough for us.

Hardware U2F to unlock would make this my dream.

I use YubiKeys setup for gpg with pass, so unlocking the keyring requires both a yubikey and a PIN, but I haven’t figured out how to do the U2F part.

Re: Clever uses of pass, the Unix password manager

#70
post #62

Recently used pass to share passwords between colleagues (3 in total). Files are encrypted against three different GPG public keys and shared via Git. Works well enough for us.

Hardware U2F to unlock would make this my dream.

If your goal is to force a touch to decrypt passwords, https://www.palkeo.com/en/blog/perfect-password-manager.html works. You can keep the GPG private key on a Yubikey and require a touch to decrypt.
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