pol 0.4.1

pol, a modern password manager

pol

pol /pɵl/ is a password manager with two important features:

1. A nice commandline interface. Want to generate a password? Just type:

   $ pol generate github "my username is John Doo"
   Enter (append-)password:
   Copied password to clipboard.  Press any key to clear ...

   This will generate a new password; copy it to the clipboard and store it under the key github with the note my username is John Doo.

   Want to retrieve the password you just stored? Just type:

   $ pol copy github
   Enter password:
    note: 'my username is John Doo'
   Copied secret to clipboard.  Press any key to clear ...

   See below for a description of all commands.

2. Hidden containers. The best way to keep a secret, is being able to deny you are keeping one. Sometimes you are forced to give up your passwords. For instance, by a criminal, government or employer. Luckily a pol safe can have multiple containers. Each container is opened by its own passwords. If someone does not have a password of a container, he cannot prove the existence of the container in any way. Even if he has multiple versions of your safe! Thus if you are forced to open your pol safe, you can give a password to an uninteresting container and keep your real secrets safe.

Getting started

Installation

First, we install pol.

On Debian Wheezy

$ sudo apt-get install libgmp3-dev build-essential \
                        python-dev python-pip
$ sudo pip install pol

On Ubuntu 13.04 and 14.04.1

$ sudo apt-get install libgmp-dev build-essential python-dev \
                    python-pip libssl-dev libyaml-dev libssl-dev
$ sudo pip install pol

On Mac with homebrew

$ brew install python gmp
$ pip install pol

On Mac with MacPorts

Install MacPorts. Then run

$ sudo bash
# port install gmp py-pip py27-crypto
# pip-2.7 install pol

If you get pol: command not found when you try to run pol, add /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin to your PATH. For instance, like this:

$ echo 'export PATH=/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile

Creating a safe

Then, we create a new safe with pol init. pol will ask you for the passwords of your containers.

$ pol init
You are about to create a new safe.  A safe can have up to six
separate containers to store your secrets.  A container is
accessed by one of its passwords.  Without one of its passwords,
you cannot prove the existence of a container.

Container #1
  Each container must have a master-password.  This password gives
  full access to the container.

    Enter master-password:

  A container can have a list-password.  With this password you can
  list and add entries.  You cannot see the secrets of the existing
  entries.  Leave blank if you do not want a list-password.

    Enter list-password [no list-password]:

  A container can have an append-password.  With this password you
  can only add entries.  You cannot see the existing entries.
  Leave blank if you do not want an append-password.

    Enter append-password [no append-password]:

Container #2
  Now enter the passwords for the second container.
  Leave blank if you do not want a second container.

    Enter master-password [stop]:
    Enter list-password [no list-password]:
    Enter append-password [no append-password]:

Container #3
    Enter master-password [stop]:

Generating group parameters for this safe. This can take a while ...
[#####################=========================================================]
  449 tried,  63.6/s  56.7%                     0:00:18
  allocating container #1 ...
  allocating container #2 ...
  trashing freespace ...

Common commands

generate a new password

This will generate a new password, copy it to your clipboard and store it under the key facebook.

$ pol generate facebook
Enter (append-)password:
Copied password to clipboard.  Press any key to clear ...

You might want to add a note. This note is shown when you retrieve the password.

$ pol generate facebook "e-mail: [e-mail]"
Enter (append-)password:
Copied password to clipboard.  Press any key to clear ...

If you just want a password, but do not want to store it, omit the key:

$ pol generate
Copied password to clipboard.  Press any key to clear ...

If you want to write it to the screen, add --stdout:

$ pol generate --stdout
$^NxY{&Fsy,&->Gi$RZ}

There are several options to change the style of the password:

# xkcd style password with 40 bits of entropy
$ pol generate --stdout --kind english --entropy 40
dirty papal nephew repair

# alphanumeric password that would take ages to bruteforce with 10 tries per second
$ pol generate --sdtout --kind alphanum --web-crack-time ages
NNrZ9g8Sy

For all options, see pol generate -h.

Copy password to clipboard

To copy a password stored under the key digid from the safe to your clipboard, write

$ pol copy digid
Enter password:
 note: 'used the e-mail [e-mail]'
Copied secret to clipboard.  Press any key to clear ...

List passwords

To list the entries in a container, use

$ pol list
Enter (list-)password:
Container @280
 github               'user: johndoo'
 router
 facebook             'email: [e-mail]'
 bios.notebook
 bios.pc

You can filter results as follows

$ pol list bios
Container @280
 bios.notebook
 bios.pc

Edit entries

To edit all entries in a container, use

$ pol edit
Enter password:

This will open up your default text editor ($EDITOR) with, in this example:

github        #1 user: johndoo
router        #2
facebook      #3 email: [e-mail]
bios.notebook #4
bios.pc       #5

Simply edit the entries, save the file and exit the editor. pol will apply the changes. Remove lines to remove entries; reorder lines to reorder entries and add a line to add an entry.

By default, the secrets are replaced by pointers like #2. To change a secret, simply replace the pointer by the secret. For instance:

github        mypassword user: johndoo

To show the secrets by default, use pol edit -s.

You can filter the entries to edit: executing pol edit bios will present the following file to edit.

bios.notebook #1
bios.pc       #2

With pol edit -m you can enter multiple passwords to edit entries of multiple containers. Enter as many passwords as you like and leave the prompt blank to continue to the editor:

$ pol edit -m
Enter password:
Enter next password [done]:
Enter next password [done]:

You will be presented a file like:

CONTAINER 1
github        #1 user: johndoo
router        #2
facebook      #3 email: [e-mail]
bios.notebook #4
bios.pc       #5

CONTAINER 2
supersecret   #6
recoverykey   #7

Move entries under different headers to move them between containers. It is that simple.

Technical background

For those who like context-free mumbo-jumbo: pol uses El Gamal rerandomization, Argon2d, AES-256 CTR, ECIES on secp160r1, SHA-256, Fortuna and msgpack. For actual details, see FORMAT.md

Attribution

The developers of pol are

• Bas Westerbaan

Others have been involved indirectly:

• Bart Jacobs suggested using El-Gamal rerandomization

• Wieb Bosma and Eric Cator have helped approximating the density of the safe primes.

pol builds on dozens of other (open source) projects, notably:

• pycrypto

• gmpy

• seccure

• zxcvbn

Finally, the following projects have influenced the design.

• Password Safe

pol Changelog

0.4.1 (2017-01-07)

Bugfixes:

• Fix a bug where a container would not open if no list or append-only password is set.

0.4.0 (2017-01-04)

Feaures:

• Preview of pol vi: an ncurses interface!

• Use Argon2d as the default key-stretcher.

Bugfixes:

• Work-around argon2cffi switching from Argon2 v1.0 to v1.3.

• Do not show progressbar after returning the shell to the user.

• Atomic save: you will not loose your safe anymore if something goes wrong while writing the safe to disk (assuming os.rename is atomic).

Internals:

• open_containers is now reentrant: e.g. calling open_containers with the same password twice will return the same Container.

0.3.7.1 (2016-01-03)

• Add new key-stretcher argon2.

  It is the winner of the recent Password Hashing Competition . To use argon2 instead of the current default scrypt, create a safe with pol init --argon2.

0.3.6 (2016-01-03)

• Rerandomize in background to return shell earlier.

• Use static __version__ attribute.

• Use RST for README.

• Use the twofish module instead of mcrypt.