Pass - a very simple password storage mechanism

NOTE

This software is no longer actively developed or maintained. I have switched to using the (confusingly similar-named) tool from https://www.passwordstore.org/. The general ideas are substantially similar, the main differences being:

• this tool uses a single file versus one per item, which obscures some metadata at the cost of less flexibility (e.g., you cannot use this pass to share subsets of your repository with another gpg key)

• the zx2c4 pass actually has an active community with up-to-date ecosystem tools, like https://github.com/passff/passff

So while I don't know of any particular problems with this software, I overall recommend not using it in favor of the zx2c4 tool.

Introduction

Pass makes it easy to store passwords (or any other secret data). It aims to be secure and easy to integrate with existing Unix tools and version control. The encryption is all done by gpg, using one (or more) keypairs, and the contents themselves are organized as YAML. A vim plugin is provided to make editing the encrypted file easier.

Here's an example. The file is encrypted on disk with gpg:

$ cat ~/.pass/pass.gpg
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.15 (GNU/Linux)

hQQOAwC+u3g6GPWoEBAAtdHigCS83FWokK9fFAwjVNx1nhdVCWlReKgIftktoUKj
ZjKzBk9gLmUHi0UMVjAtbxkhscEzLtVyBhlhpIMbG2/iEjoxS90ZnBWhavJWGQtd
[...]
UC6q6YCaR9qcfhVHAvcBIuCq1u3GwsZd0NyY+buJj38APc1JZshugCWu
=/oK0
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

The decrypted contents are YAML:

$ gpg -qd <~/.pass/pass.gpg
# recipient: me@example.com
mybank:
  desc: MyBank Savings and Loan
  username: me
  password: foo

Note that we didn't enter a passphrase above; this system works much better if you use gpg-agent, which will prompt for and cache your password outside of the terminal.

Using the vim plugin, you can edit it just like a regular file. The decrypted contents are never stored on disk, and you can commit the result. The version control system will see only the encrypted version, so you are free to push it. A git diff-helper makes diffs more readable.

Updating an entry might look like this (the editing happens inside vim, with the decryption/encryption steps transparent to the user):

$ vi ~/.pass/pass.gpg
$ git diff
diff --git a/pass.gpg b/pass.gpg
index f42955f..b42cffe 100644
--- a/pass.gpg
+++ b/pass.gpg
@@ -2,4 +2,4 @@
 mybank:
   desc: MyBank Savings and Loan
   username: me
-  password: foo
+  password: bar

You can query a whole subtree of data:

$ pass mybank
mybank.desc MyBank Savings and Loan
mybank.username me
mybank.password bar

or a specific item:

$ pass mybank.pass
mybank.password bar

Note that we don't need to use the full item name. The keys are substring regexes, and can match either item names, or their desc fields:

$ pass savings.user
mybank.username me

You can also send the result straight to the X clipboard with the -p option, or list available keys with the -l option.

Setup

To setup a password store, you need to do the following:

1. Copy pass somewhere in your $PATH.

   cp pass ~/local/bin

2. Create a gpg key if you don't already have one. Make sure you're using the gpg-agent for convenience.

   gpg --gen-key echo use-agent >>~/.gnupg/gpg.conf

3. Create a repository for storing your data. If you choose another location, set $PASS_HOME to point pass to your repo.

   git init ~/.pass cd ~/.pass echo '# recipient: me@example.com' >pass.gpg echo '*.gpg diff=gpg' >.gitattributes git add . && git commit -m 'start pass repo'

4. Tell git how to show diffs between gpg files.

   git config --global diff.gpg.textconv 'gpg -qd --no-tty'

5. Install the vim plugin to make editing gpg files easier.

   mkdir -p ~/.vim/plugin cp gpg.vim ~/.vim/plugin

6. Add some content. Note that your commit messages are not encrypted.

   cd ~/.pass vi pass.gpg git commit -am 'added password for mysite'

File Formats

The gpg plugin does not care about the content of the file (so you can use it for other things besides pass data), with one exception: any lines at the beginning of the file starting with "# recipient: ..." specify gpg key-ids which should be able to access the encrypted file. Typically this will just be your email or key-id; but if you are sharing the repository, you may also list the other group members (make sure gpg knows about their keys, too).

The pass data itself is loaded via perl's YAML plugin, so any valid YAML should work. The names of the elements are up to you, and you can make hierarchies of arbitrary depth (e.g., myproject.host1.mysql.password).

Query Language

The query language is akin to XPath or CSS selectors, but much less powerful (and hopefully simpler to use as a result). A key of the form a.b.c will look for a YAML element matching a, which has a sub-element matching b, and so forth. Each part of the key is a case-insensitive regex, and must match either the hash key of the YAML element, or the value of the desc field of the YAML element.

You may specify a key which is smaller than the full path. "Top" parts of the hierarchy always match (so b.c will match a.b.c). "Bottom" parts also match, so a.b will match a.b.c and a.b.d). Elements between key parts must be matched (so a.c does not match a.b.c).

Pentadactyl Plugin

If you use the pentadactyl plugin for Firefox, there is a drop-in plugin that can help with filling form fields from pass data:

1. Copy the autofill plugin to your .pentadactyl directory:

   mkdir -p ~/.pentadactyl/plugins cp pentadactyl/autofill.js ~/.pentadactyl/plugins/

2. Add a url field to your pass stanzas. E.g.:

   example: desc: My Example Site url: https://example.com user: foo password: bar

3. Auto-generate a mapping of URLs to stanzas:

   pass --generate-autofill >~/.pentadactyl/pass.js

   You can also do the mapping by hand if you do not want to keep the URLs in your password file (but take care to make your URL regexes sufficiently restrictive):

   cat >~/.pentadactyl/pass.js <<\EOF plugins.autofill.add('^https://example\.com/', 'example'); EOF

4. Bind form-filling to a key (I use Ctrl-F), and load the mappings:

   cat >>~/.pentadactylrc <<\EOF loadplugins autofill runtime pass.js map :js plugins.autofill.fill(); imap :js plugins.autofill.fill(); EOF

With the steps above, hitting Ctrl-F at example.com will fill any input elements that look like usernames with the contents of example.user, and any that look like passwords with example.password.

Todo

This system is undoubtedly full of bugs. It works for me, but hasn't received wide use. Due to offloading the cryptography to gpg, it is hoped that all bugs are query bugs, and not security bugs. Success (or failure) reports are welcome.

Setup could be simpler; possibly the system should provide a script to help the user setup their keys and repository.

The query system is ad-hoc. It has worked well in practice, but it may be that something like XPath would be more flexible, more standardized, and not too much harder to use.

Some people might prefer another format, like JSON, over YAML. I think YAML is easier for humans to write. The system could potentially allow both (since it never writes, but only reads).

It would be helpful to integrate with tools that want to access the passwords. I currently tie this to git with the following config:

[credential "https://github.com"]
  username = peff
  helper = "!f() { test $1 = get && echo password=$(pass -n github.password); }; f"

though you could also build a fancier helper around it (e.g., storing the URL along with the username and password, and then comparing it to the URL git is trying to access).

The pentadactyl extension is rather simplistic. It looks only for user and password in input elements; this matching heuristics probably need to be expanded. Firefox's password manager already solves this problem, and it would be nice if we could piggyback on that.