avendesora 1.26

A password generator and account manager.

Avendesora, the leaf of the Tree of Life is the key.

Authors:

Ken & Kale Kundert

Version:

1.26

Released:

2024-08-28

Avendesora replaces Abraxas, which are both alternatives to the traditional password vault.

Please report all bugs and suggestions to [e-mail]

Introduction

Avendesora is powerful command-line utility that can securely hold and conveniently provide access to a wide variety of information about your accounts, including its secrets such as passwords. Account values can be displayed, copied to the clipboard, or automatically typed into running applications such as your web browser or terminal windows. Avendesora can also open accounts in your web browser, automatically recognize which account to use based on the window title, and warn you if the browser is not using encryption when you go to enter your password.

Account secrets can be saved in encrypted form, as with password vaults, or generated from a root secret. Generated secrets have two important benefits. First, they are produced from a random seed, and so are quite unpredictable. This is important, because the predictability of a passwords can be exploited when cracking passwords. Second, if a root secret is shared with another trusted party, then you both can generate new shared secrets without passing any further secrets.

Secrets are generated from a collection of seeds, one of which must be random with a very high degree of entropy. The random seed is referred to as the ‘master seed’ or the ‘root seed’. It is extremely important that the master seed remain completely secure. Never disclose a master seed to anyone except for a person you wish to collaborate with, and then only used the shared master seed for shared secrets. All of your private secrets should be generated from private master seeds. The seeds generally include the master seed, the account name, the secret name, and perhaps a version name. For example, imagine having a Gmail account, then the account name might simply be ‘gmail’, and the secret name might be ‘passcode’. In this case, your master seed is combined with the words ‘gmail’ and ‘passcode’, the combination is hashed, and then password is generated with an appropriate recipe that you specify. There are recipes for passwords, pass phrases, PINs, security questions, etc. The password itself is not stored, rather it is the seeds that are stored and the password is regenerated when needed. Notice that all the seeds except the master seed need not be kept secure. Thus, once you have shared a master seed with a collaborator, all you need to do is share the remaining seeds and your collaborator can generate exactly the same password. Another important thing to notice is that the generated password is dependent on the account and secret names. Thus if you rename your account or your secret, the password will change. So you should be careful when you first create your account to name it appropriately so you don’t feel the need to change it in the future. For example, ‘gmail’ might not be a good account name if you expect to have multiple Gmail accounts. In this case you might want to include your username in the account name. You can always make the shorter ‘gmail’ as an account alias so you can still access the account quickly.

Installation

Install with:

pip3 install --user avendesora

This will place avendesora in ~/.local/bin, which should be added to your path.

You will also need to install some operating system commands. On Fedora use:

dnf install gnupg2 xdotool xsel gobject-introspection-devel cairo-gobject-devel

If you would like to use scrypt as a way of encrypting fields, you will need to install scrypt by hand using:

pip3 install --user scrypt

Upgrading

Avendesora is primarily a password generator. As a result, there is always a chance that something could change in the password generation algorithm that causes the generated passwords to change. Of course, the program is thoroughly tested to assure this does not happen, but there is still a small chance that something slips through. To assure that you are not affected by this, you should archive your passwords before you upgrade with:

avendesora changed
avendesora archive

The changed command should always be run before an archive command. It allows you to review all the changes that have occurred so that you can verify that they were all intentional. Once you are comfortable, run the archive command to save all the changes. Then upgrade with:

pip3 install -upgrade --user avendesora

Finally, run:

avendesora changed

to confirm that none of your generated passwords have changed.

It is a good idea to run ‘avendesora changed’ and ‘avendesora archive’ on a routine basis to keep your archive up to date.

Upon updating you may find that Avendesora produces a message that a ‘hash’ has changed. This is an indication that something has changed in the program that could affect the generated secrets. Again, care is taken when developing Avendesora to prevent this from happening. But it is an indication that you should take extra care. Specifically you should follow the above procedure to assure that the value of your generated secrets have not changed. Once you have confirmed that the upgrade has not affected your generated secrets, you should follow the directions given in the warning and update the appropriate hash contained in ~/.config/avendesora/.hashes.

Requirements

GPG

To use Avendesora, you will need GPG and you will need a GPG ID that is associated with a private key. That GPG ID could be in the form of an email address or an ID string that can be found using ‘gpg –list-keys’.

If you do not yet have a GPG key, you can get one using:

$ gpg --gen-key

You should probably choose 4096 RSA keys. Now, edit ~/.gnupg/gpg-conf and add the line:

use-agent

That way, you generally need to give your GPG key pass phrase less often. The agent remembers the passphrase for you for a time. Ten minutes is the default, but you can configure gpg-agent to cache passphrases for as long as you like.

If you use the agent, be sure to also use screen locking so your passwords are secure when you walk away from your computer.

Vim

If you use Vim, it is very helpful for you to install GPG support in Vim. To do so first download:

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3645

Then copy the file into your Vim configuration hierarchy:

cp gnupg.vim ~/.vim/plugin

Initialization

To operate, Avendesora needs a collection of configuration and accounts files that are stored in ~/.config/avendesora. To create this directory and the initial versions of these files, run:

avendesora init -g <gpg_id>

For example:

avendesora init -g [e-mail]

or:

avendesora init -g 1B2AFA1C

If you would like to have more than one person access your passwords, you should give GPG IDs for everyone:

avendesora init -g [e-mail],[e-mail]

After initialization, there should be several files in ~/.config/avendesora. In particular, you should see at least an initial accounts files and a config file.

Configuration

The config file (~/.config/avendesora/config) allows you to personalize Avendesora to your needs. After initializing your account you should take the time to review the config file and adjust it to fit your needs. You should be very thoughtful in this initial configuration, because some decisions (or nondecisions) you make can be very difficult to change later. The reason for this is that they may affect the passwords you generate, and if you change them you may change existing generated passwords. In particular, be careful with dictionary_file and default_passphase_separator. Changing these values when first initializing Avendesora is fine, but should not be done or done very carefully once you start creating accounts and secrets.

During an initial configuration is also a convenient time to determine which of your files should be encrypted with GPG. To assure that a file is encrypted, give it a GPG file suffix (.gpg or .asc). The appropriate settings to adjust are: archive_file, log_file, both of which are set in the config file, and the accounts files, which are found in ~/.config/avendesora/.accounts_files. For security reasons it is highly recommended that the archive file be encrypted, and any accounts file that contain sensitive accounts. If you change the suffix on an accounts file and you have not yet placed any accounts in that file, you can simply delete the existing file and then regenerate it using:

avendesora init -g <gpg_id>

Any files that already exist will not be touched, but any missing files will be recreated, and this time they will be encrypted or not based on the extension you give.

Using Avendesora

Avendesora supports a series of commands, the complete list of which can be had by running the help command:

> avendesora help

More information on a command is accessed by adding the name of the command as the second argument to the help command:

> avendesora help name

As an aid to finding the right help topic the topics that contain a particular search term are listed by adding the -s or –search command line option:

> avendesora help -s term

If the first argument is not a command, then it must be the name of an account. In this case, the credentials command is run if only the account name is given, otherwise the value command is run (any options to the value command should be given after the account name). The credentials command generally gives the information you would need to login to an account, typically the username or email and the passcode. The value command allows you to request the value of a specific piece of information from the account. So for example:

> avendesora amazon
email: [e-mail]
password: XDyfL5it

> avendesora citi pin
56713522

> avendesora southwest 0
questions.0 (First foreign country I visited): contour subtract impel

If you give a number for the desired value, Avendesora assumes you want the answer to the corresponding security question.

Accounts

Avendesora holds information about your accounts in accounts files. The list of current accounts files is contained in ~/.config/avendesora/.accounts_files. Each is a possibly encrypted Python file. All information known about a particular account is contained in the attributes of a class that is created for that account. For example:

class BigBank(Account):
    aliases = 'bb'
    username = 'gman33'
    email = '[e-mail]'
    urls = 'https://bigbank.com/login'
    passcode = Password(length=12)
    verbal = Passphrase(length=2)
    pin = PIN()
    accounts = {
        'checking':   Hidden('MTIzNDU2Nzg='),
        'savings':    Hidden('MjM0NTY3ODk='),
        'creditcard': Hidden('ODczMi0yODk0LTI4NjEtMjgxMA=='),
    }
    questions = [
        Question('What city were you born in?'),
        Question('What street did you grow up on?'),
        Question('What was your childhood nickname?'),
    ]
    customer_service = '1-866-229-6633'

Each attribute represents a piece of information that can be requested. For example, a summary of all information can be requested with:

> avendesora values bb
names: bigbank, bb
accounts:
    checking: <reveal with 'avendesora show bigbank accounts.checking'>
    creditcard: <reveal with 'avendesora show bigbank accounts.creditcard'>
    savings: <reveal with 'avendesora show bigbank accounts.savings'>
customer service: 1-866-229-6633
email: [e-mail]
passcode: <reveal with 'avendesora show bigbank passcode'>
pin: <reveal with 'avendesora show bigbank pin'>
questions:
    0: What city were you born in? <reveal with 'avendesora show bigbank questions.0'>
    1: What street did you grow up on? <reveal with 'avendesora show bigbank questions.1'>
    2: What was your childhood nickname? <reveal with 'avendesora show bigbank questions.2'>
urls: https://bigbank.com/login
username: gman33
verbal: <reveal with 'avendesora show bigbank verbal'>

The attributes have various levels of confidentiality. Simple strings are not considered sensitive. Those values provided by Python classes inherit the confidentiality of the class. Hide() and Hidden() provides simple concealment. GPG() and Scrypt() provides full encryption. And classes like Password(), PasswordRecipe(), Passphrase(), PIN() and Question() generate secrets. Attributes that are considered sensitive are not shown in the above summary, but can be requested individually:

> avendesora value bb pin
pin: 7784

Attributes can be simple scalars, such as pin. They can be arrays, such as questions:

> avendesora value bigbank questions.1
questions.1 (What street did you grow up on?): lockout insulator crumb

Or they can be dictionaries:

> avendesora value bb accounts.checking
accounts.checking: 12345678

The passcode attribute is the default scalar attribute:

> avendesora value bb
passcode: Nj3gpqHNfiie

The questions attribute is the default array attribute, which is used if the requested field is a number:

> avendesora value bb 0
questions.0 (What city were you born in?): muffin favorite boyfriend

You can also use simple scripts as the requested value:

> avendesora value 'username: {username}, password: {passcode}'
username: gman33, password: Nj3gpqHNfiie

Finally, the attributes themselves may be scripts. For example, if you added the following to you account:

cc = Script('{accounts.creditcard} 02/23 363')

Then you could access a summary of your credit card information with:

> avendesora value cc
8732-2894-2861-2810 02/23 363

Adding And Editing Accounts

You add new accounts using the add command:

> avendesora add [<template>]

The available templates can be found using:

> avendesora help add

You can add new templates or edit the existing templates by changing account_templates in ~/.config/avendesora/config.

The add command will open your editor (set this with the edit_template setting in the config file). If you are using default version of edit_template the template will be opened in Vim with the n key is mapped to take you to the next field. You can edit any part of the template you like, but at a minimum you need to edit the fields.

Once an account exists, you can edit it using:

> avendesora edit [<account>]

This opens the accounts file with your editor (set this with the edit_account setting in the config file). If you are using default version of edit_account, which uses VIM, it should take you directly to the account.

Finding Accounts

There are two ways of finding accounts. First, you can list any accounts whose name or aliases contains a text fragment. For example:

> avendesora find bank
bank:
    bankofamerica (boa)

Second, you can list any accounts that contain a text fragment in any non-secret field. For example:

> avendesora search 4408
4408:
    bankofamerica (boa)

Autotyping Passwords

There are a couple of things that must be done to enable autotyping of passwords. First, at least some secrets must be configured for discovery. Discovery allows secrets to determine whether they are good candidates for use in a particular situation based on the environment. The environment includes such things as with title of the active window, the user name, the host name, etc. If multiple secrets are suitable, a small window pops up and lets you choose between them. To see how to configure secrets for discovery, run ‘avendesora help discovery’.

To make secret discovery easier and more robust it is helpful to add a plugin to your web browser to make its title more informative. For Firefox, the best plugin to use is AddURLToWindowTitle. For Chrome it is URLinTitle. (The latest versions of Firefox are incompatible with AddURLToWindowTitle, however you can use the Firefox version of URLinTitle instead.) It is recommended that you install the appropriate one into your browser. For AddURLToWindowTitle, set the following options:

show full URL = yes

separator string = ‘-’

show field attributes = no

For URLinTitle, set:

tab title format = ‘{title} - {protocol}://{hostname}{port}/{path}’

Finally, you need to configure your window manager to run Avendesora when you type a special hot key, such as Alt p. The idea is that you are in a situation where you need a secret, such as visiting your bank’s website in your browser, then you click on the account name field with your mouse and type your hot key. This runs Avendesora without an account name. In this case, Avendesora uses secret discovery to determine which secret to use and the script that should be used to produce the required information. Generally the script would be to enter the account name, then tab, then the password, and finally return, but you can configure the script as you choose. This is all done as part of configuring discovery. The method for associating Avendesora to a particular hot key is dependent on your window manager. With Gnome, it requires that you open your Keyboard Shortcuts preferences and create a new shortcut. When you do this, choose ‘avendesora value’ as the command to run.

Python API

You can access account information from Avendesora using Python using a simple relatively high-level interface as shown in this example:

from avendesora import PasswordGenerator, PasswordError
from inform import display, fatal, os_error
from shlib import Run
from pathlib import Path

try:
    pw = PasswordGenerator()
    account = pw.get_account('mybank')
    name = account.get_value('NAME')
    username = account.get_value('username')
    passcode = account.get_value('passcode')
    url = account.get_value('ofxurl')
except PasswordError as err:
    fatal(err)

try:
    curl = Run(f'curl --user {username!s}:{passcode!s} {url!s}', 'sOEW0')
    Path(f'{name!s}.ofx').write_text(curl.stdout)
except OSError as err:
    fatal(os_error(err))

PasswordGenerator():

Initializes the password generator. You should pass no arguments.

get_account(name, request_seed=False, stealth_name=None):

Accesses a particular account. Takes a string for the account name or alias. The name is case insensitive and the ‘-’ may be given for ‘_’.

Optionally takes a second argument (request_seed) that may be a Boolean, a string, or a function that returns a string. The string is used as an additional seed (see: avendesora help misdirection), and if True is passed in, the user in queried for the seed.

The stealth name is used as account name if the account is a stealth account.

get_name():

return name of account.

get_value(field):

Returns the value of a particular account attribute given a user-oriented string that describes the desired attribute. The value requested must be a scalar value, meaning that you must individually request members of arrays or dictionary attributes. Here are some examples that demonstrate the various ways of accessing the various kinds of attributes:

passcode = account.get_value()
username = account.get_value('username')
both = account.get_value('username: {username}, password: {passcode}')
checking = account.get_value('accounts.checking')
savings = account.get_value('accounts[checking]')
answer0 = account.get_value(0)
answer1 = account.get_value('questions.1')
answer2 = account.get_value('questions[2]')

If the argument passed to get_value is a field, then it may consist of a name (the identifier for the first level of the field) and a key (the identifier for the second level of the field). The field is case insensitive and a ‘-’ will match a ‘_’ and visa versa.

You can also specify the name and key separately in a tuple:

username = account.get_value(('username',))
checking = account.get_value(('accounts', 'checking'))
answer0 = account.get_value((0,))
answer1 = account.get_value(('questions', 1))

The value is returned as an object that contains four attributes, value (the actual value), is_secret (whether the value is secret or contains a secret), name (the name of the value), and desc (the description, contains the actual question of the answer to a question is requested). Converting the object to a string returns the value rendered as a string. There is also the render() method that returns a string that combines the name and the description with the value. It takes an optional collection of format strings, the first one that matches is used. The format strings may contain keys in braces that get replaced by the corresponding attributes. The known keys are n {name}, k (key), f (field, combination of name and key), d (description) and v (value). A format string does not match it if contains a key for a value that is not available. If no format string matches, the value is returned as a string. The default formats are (‘{f} ({d}): {v}’, ‘{f}: {v}’).

If a composite field is requested get_value() raises a PasswordError, and the exception contains the is_collection and collection attributes. The first is a Boolean and the second is the list of available keys. PassworError returns None for unknown attributes, so it is always safe to access these attributes without checking whether they exist.

get_values(field):

Used to get the values for a composite field. It iterates through the value and returns a tuple that contains the key and the value for each item in the field.

Field is an identifier that may consist of a name (the identifier for the first level of the field) and a key (the identifier for the second level of the field). The field is case insensitive and a ‘-’ will match a ‘_’ and visa versa.

Here is how you might iterate through both the scalar and composite values in an account:

try:
    value = acct.get_value(field)
    lines += value.render('{n}: {v}').split('\n')
except PasswordError as e:
    if not e.is_collection:
        raise
    lines += [name + ':']
    for key, value in acct.get_values(name):
        lines += indent(
            value.render(('{k}) {d}: {v}', '{k}: {v}'))
        ).split('\n')

get_fields():

Iterates through the fields, each iteration yields a name and possibly a collection of keys ([None] is returned if the name corresponds to a scalar). The name and keys returned are the resolved names, which can be passed to get_scalar() and get_composite().

Here is how this method can be used to iterate through the account values:

# gather user fields
lines = []
for field, keys in account.get_fields():
    if keys == [None]:
        v = account.get_value(field)
        lines += v.render('{n}: {v}').split('\n')
    else:
        lines.append(field + ':')
        for k, v in account.get_values(field):
            lines += indent(
                v.render(('{k}) {d}: {v}', '{k}: {v}'))
            ).split('\n')
account_summary = '\n'.join(lines)

get_fields() accepts a Boolean argument that if specified and is true will iterate through all fields, including those generally only used by Avendesora, such as aliases and discovery.

get_scalar(name, key=None, default=False):

A lower level interface than get_value that given a name and perhaps a key returns a scalar value. Also takes an optional default value that is returned if the value is not found. Unlike get_value, the actual value is returned, not a object that contains multiple facets of the value. Also, the name and key must match exactly.

The name is the field name, and the key would identity which value is desired if the field is a composite. If default is False, an error is raise if the value is not present, otherwise the default value itself is returned.

If the value returned is an Avendesora object (GeneratedSecret, ObscuredSecret, Script), then you should cast it to a string to get its resolved value.

get_composite(name):

A lower level interface than get_value that given a name returns the value of the associated field, which may be a scalar (string or integer) or a composite (array of dictionary). Unlike get_value, the actual value is returned, not a object that contains multiple facets of the value. Also, the name and key must match exactly.

If the value returned is an Avendesora object (GeneratedSecret, ObscuredSecret, Script), then you should cast it to a string to get its resolved value.

API Example

The following example creates encrypted files that contain account information that would be needed by close family members and by a business partner in case anything happened to you. This is an abbreviated version of an example given in the users’ guide.

#!/bin/env python3

from avendesora import PasswordGenerator, PasswordError
from textwrap import dedent
from inform import (
    display, done, Error, error, indent, is_collection, os_error
)
import gnupg


files = [
    {   'FILENAME': 'family.gpg',
        'RECIPIENTS': '[e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail]'.split(),
        'ACCOUNTS': 'bank brokerage creditcard'.split(),
    },
    {   'FILENAME': 'partner.gpg',
        'RECIPIENTS': '[e-mail] [e-mail]'.split(),
        'ACCOUNTS': 'login ssh root backups'.split(),
    },
]

try:
    pw = PasswordGenerator()

    for each in files:
        accounts = []
        for account_name in each['ACCOUNTS']:
            acct = pw.get_account(account_name)
            title = acct.get_scalar('desc', default=account_name)
            lines = [title, len(title)*'=']

            for name, keys in acct.get_fields():
                if keys:
                    lines.append(name + ':')
                    for key, value in acct.get_values(name):
                        lines += indent(
                            value.render(('{k}) {d}: {v}', '{k}: {v}'))
                        ).split('\n')
                else:
                    value = acct.get_value(name)
                    lines += value.render('{n}: {v}').split('\n')
            accounts.append('\n'.join(lines))

        gpg = gnupg.GPG(gpgbinary='gpg2')
        encrypted = gpg.encrypt('\n\n\n'.join(accounts), each['RECIPIENTS'])
        if not encrypted.ok:
            raise Error(
                'unable to encrypt:', encrypted.stderr, culprit=each['FILENAME']
            )
        try:
            with open(each['FILENAME'], 'w') as file:
                file.write(str(encrypted))
            print("%s: created." % each['FILENAME'])
        except OSError as e:
            raise Error(os_error(e))

except (PasswordError, Error) as e:
    e.terminate()

Getting Help

You can find the documentation on ReadTheDocs.

The help command provides information on how to use Avendesora’s various features. To get a listing of the topics available, use:

avendesora help

Then, for information on a specific topic use:

avendesora help <topic>

It is worth browsing all of the available topics at least once to get a sense of all that Avendesora can do.

Contributing

Please ask questions or report bugs on Github Issues. I will entertain pull requests if you make improvements. Currently Avendesora is very Fedora and VIM centric. I am particularly interested in help adapting Avendesora in the following ways:

• Support for other editors, window managers and distributions.

• Support for Windows and OSX.

• Support for Android and iOS (perhaps through exports to a password manager that already support smartphones).