mypass 2.0

A secure password manager with command line interface

mypass

A secure password manager for UNIX (Linux, BSD) that can be used conviniently from the command line.

I prefer the command line over the GUI, and the lack of password managers that serve this use case, motivated me to write my own. It also comes with a browser extension in order to conviniently but securely fill out logins on the web.

Installation

On Debian/Ubuntu

A package is available from the author's PPA, which can be installed by running following commands (as root):

add-apt-repository ppa:s.noack/ppa
apt-get update
apt-get install mypass

Using pip

Make sure you have Python 3 and SQLCipher installed. Then run following command (optionally as root for system-wide installation):

pip3 install mypass

Command completion (optional)

In order to enable completion of subcommands, contexts and usernames in Bash, add the following line to your ~/.bashrc or in a new file in /etc/bash_completion.d/ (if available, for system-wide configuration):

eval "$(register-python-argcomplete --no-defaults mypass)"

For enabling completion in Zsh, Tcsh and Fish please refer to the argcomplete documentation.

Browser integration (optional)

In order to allow the browser extension to communicate with the host application, please run the following commands, replacing <vendor> and <manifest-dir> with the respective values from the table below:

mkdir -p <manifest-dir>
ln -s -t <manifest-dir> $(python3 -c 'import mypass, os; print(os.path.dirname(mypass.__file__))')/native-messaging-hosts/<vendor>/*

	vendor	manifest-dir (system-wide)	manifest-dir (per-user)
Firefox	mozilla	/usr/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts	~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts
Google Chrome	chrome	/etc/opt/chrome/native-messaging-hosts	~/.config/google-chrome/NativeMessagingHosts
Chromium	chrome	/etc/chromium/native-messaging-hosts	~/.config/chromium/NativeMessagingHosts

If you want to load the extension in Firefox, please run the following commands, replacing <prefix> with /usr/share for system-wide installation (root required), or replace <prefix> with ~ for per-user installation, then restart Firefox:

mkdir -p <prefix>/mozilla/extensions/{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}
ln -s $(python3 -c 'import mypass, os; print(os.path.dirname(mypass.__file__))')/extension <prefix>/mozilla/extensions/{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}/[e-mail]

For Chromium-based browsers, you can install the extension from the Chrome Web Store.

Usage

When you run most of the commands below, you will be prompted for the passhprase to decrypt/encrypt the credentials with. If the encrypted file doesn't exist yet, it will be created when you store any credentials for the first time. By default, a daemon is spawned and shuts down after 30 minutes of inactivity, so that you don't have to enter your passphrase again when performing multiple actions within that period.

mypass add <context> [<username>] [<password>]

Stores credentials for the given context.

The context can be any unique keyword which you relate to these credentials. But if the credentials are for a website, it is recommended to use the corresponding domain as context, so that the browser extension finds the credentials, see below.

The username is optional, but specifying a username if there is any, allows you to store multiple username/password pairs for the same context. Also, if a username is given, it will be used by the browser extension when filling out web forms.

If password is omitted you will be prompted for the password. Passing the password on the command line is NOT recommeded, except for import scripts, as it will end up in your shell's history.

mypass new <context> [<username>]

Same as mypass add, but stores a new random secure password and prints it.

mypass get <context>

Prints the credentials for the given context.

mypass list

Prints each context (one per line) that any credentials have been stored for. In order to filter the list, just pipe the output to programs like grep.

mypass remove <context> [<username>]

Deletes credentials from the encrypted storage. If username is given, only this username and the associated password is removed. If username is omitted, the whole context is wiped.

mypass rename --new-{context|username}=<newvalue> <context> [<username>]

Moves credentials around within the encrypted storage.

Examples

Renaming a context:

mypass rename --new-context=new.example.com old.example.com

Changing the username for example.com from john to rose:

mypass rename --new-username=rose example.com john

Adding a username to a password which has been stored without an associated username:

mypass rename --new-username=rose example.com

mypass alias <context> <alias>

Creates a new context that refers to the credentials of an existing context.

Changes to the credentials performed under either context will be reflected when looking up the credentials for the other context. Removing either context doesn't remove the credentials as long as the other context exists.

mypass changepw

Prompts you for a new passphrase. Existing credentials are re-encrypted using this passphrase.

mypass lock

Forces the daemon to immediately shutdown, if it is running, so that you'd have to enter the passphrase again, from now on.

Configuration

Optionally, you can create a config file under ~/.config/mypass, in order to override any of the following presets:

[daemon]
# Minutes of inactivity after which the daemon shuts down, and you have
# to enter the passphrase, the credentials are encrypted with, again.
timeout = 30

# Path to log file any excpetions thrown by the daemon are written to.
logfile = /home/user/.config/mypass/log

[database]
# Path to the encrypted file storing the credentials.
path = /home/user/.config/mypass/db

[password]
# Length of newly generated passwords.
length = 16

Browser integration

If you installed mypass on Debian/Ubuntu from the PPA above, next time you start Chromium or Firefox, the extension should be active. If you installed mypass by other means see above how to install the browser extension. Note that while the browser extension is optional, it cannot be used standalone but requires the command line utility to be installed as well.

The extension adds a button to the browser bar that when clicked, fills out login forms in the active tab, if the document's domain and path (partially) match the context of any stored credentials. If the document's URL is https://www.example.com/foo/bar for example, credentials from following contexts are considered, in this order:

1. www.example.com/foo/bar
2. www.example.com/foo
3. www.example.com
4. example.com

The browser extension is intentionally kept simple and doesn't provide functionality to manage credentials. Please use the command line utility therefore.