secrets-cli

secrets

Secure and simple passwords manager written in Go. It aims to be NYAPM (Not Yet Another Password Manager), but tries to be different from others by following UNIX philosophy of doing only one thing and doing it well.

Features

• stores your secrets encrypted at rest;
• secrets can be anything from passwords, 2FA backup codes, diary entries to private keys;
• does not leak count nor nature of your secrets;
• uses an alternative easy to use secure cryptography provided by libsodium and Argon2id;
• supports multiple vaults with different passwords;
• has CLI interface pre-built binaries for macOS, Linux and Windows, but can be compiled for many other platforms too due to usage of underlying Go language;
• may be used as an independent Go library.

Anti-Features

• does not sync your secrets to any cloud - you have complete control over them;
• does not allow to recover any passwords when vault password has been forgotten - there's no built-in backdoor;
• does not generate any passwords - use proper tools for that, but avoid improper ones;
• does not auto-fill any passwords anywhere (you don't want that anyway) - it's up to you how you will fill your passwords;
• does not have any mobile apps nor browser plugins - less chance of your secrets to be leaked;

Is it secure?

Yes, as long as its underlying cryptography is not broken. However, there are no 100% secure systems and there's no way to guarantee that. All in all, I'd say that using this is more secure than using any other SaaS as a password manager because everything is under your control. The most secure system is not a software itself, but it's how and where you use it.

Installation

Download latest binary from releases extract it and add it to somewhere in your PATH. That's it.

Of course, you're free to compile your own version of binary to be 100% sure that it has not been tampered with, since this is an open-source project after all.

Usage

Here's an output from secrets --help command.

$ secrets COMMAND [OPTIONS]

Usage:
  secrets list [FILTER] [--alias=VAULT_ALIAS | --path=VAULT_PATH]
  secrets add NAME [--alias=VAULT_ALIAS | --path=VAULT_PATH]
  secrets edit ID [--alias=VAULT_ALIAS | --path=VAULT_PATH]
  secrets delete ID [--alias=VAULT_PATH | --path=VAULT_PATH]
  secrets change-password [--alias=VAULT_PATH | --path=VAULT_PATH]
  secrets initialize --path=VAULT_PATH --alias=VAULT_ALIAS

Options:
  --alias VAULT_ALIAS    Optional vault alias.
  --path VAULT_PATH      Optional vault path. Defaults to the path in configuration.
  -h --help              Show this screen.
  -v --version           Show version.

Initializing Vault

Vault needs to be initialized if there is going to be a default vault. Otherwise specifying --path or --alias with any command is supported. Initializing vault just stores location and alias to your vault into a configuration file:

$ secrets initialize --path /home/user/.secrets.json --alias main
Vault successfully configured at /home/user/.secrets.conf.json and is ready to store your secrets!

Adding a New Secret

Add your first secret:

$ secrets add "my secret"
Enter vault password: [enter secure passphrase and remember it]
Enter value for 'my secret':
my secret value
Added: 
[299ed462-b171-4d67-ba21-264b221d9913]
my secret
my secret value

Because values can have multiple lines, you can enter whatever you want. Use ctrl+d on macOS and Linux or ctrl+z on Windows to complete entering multi-line values.

Listing All Secrets

$ secrets list
Enter vault password: [your secure passphrase]

[299ed462-b171-4d67-ba21-264b221d9913]
my secret
my secret value

Listing Specific Secrets

$ secrets list "secret"
Enter vault password: [your secure passphrase]

[299ed462-b171-4d67-ba21-264b221d9913]
my secret
my secret value

Editing a Secret

$ secrets edit 299ed462-b171-4d67-ba21-264b221d9913
Enter vault password: [your secure passphrase]
Enter new name: different secret name
Enter new value:
different secret value
yet another secret value line
Edited: 
[299ed462-b171-4d67-ba21-264b221d9913]
different secret name
different secret value
yet another secret value line

Deleting a Secret

$ secrets delete 299ed462-b171-4d67-ba21-264b221d9913
Enter vault password: 
Deleted: 
[299ed462-b171-4d67-ba21-264b221d9913]
different secret name
different secret value
yet another secret value line

Using multiple vaults

Just append --alias after any command to operate against selected vault. When --alias is not specified a first vault existing in configuration file will be used.

But how do I sync vault between different devices?!

One way to sync would be to use any already existing syncing platforms like Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. Since you can specify vault storage location then it is up to you how (or if even) you sync.

Development

1. Install dep for dependency management.

2. Retrieve, build and install binaries to $GOPATH/bin/

go get -u github.com/jarmo/secrets
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/jarmo/secrets
dep ensure
make
make install

Background Story

I've used LastPass and mitro in the past to store my secrets, but didn't feel too secure with either of them due to security vulnerabilities and/or one of them being shut down. I've got enough of switching between different managers and decided to write my own. I did write a version of secrets in Ruby a few years ago, but decided to give Go a try due to its portability features and here's the result. I've also decided to use a cryptographic library called libsodium. I've done my best, but there's no guarantees that it's secure.