pwclip 1.3.5

password-manager that temporarily saves passwords into clipboard

What pwclip is

pwclip is a password management tool. It’s main target is having fast and comfortable access to passwords by storing them for a variable time in the systems clipboard (copy/paste buffer). It uses either GnuPG2 or OpenSSL (converted to GPGSM) keys as cryptographic operations. It also works with yubikey’s challenge-response to generate uniq HMAC-SHA1 hashes stored to the clipboard as well.

The main feature is the pwcli/pwclip mode which provides easy access to the ~/.passcrypt file. That file is used by default as password storage. The program is executed in gui mode when pwclip is called and in cli mode when pwcli is called respectivly. Is creates the ~/.passcrypt file which is gpg encrypted text using either the value of GPGKEYS as gpg recipients (if it’s found in the user’s environment). On startup it lookes for a ~/.pwd.yaml file which, if found, is merged with the already known passwords from the ~/.passcrypt file if there already is one. All entrys in the ~/.passcrypt file will be overridden by the entrys from the ~/.pwd.yaml file. Finally the ~/.pwd.yaml file is deleted - see “YAML-Format” section for details.

The second operating mode is for operating on yubikeys to generate uniq responses which might be used as passwords while they can be generated by that exact yubikey only. The first yubikey found on the system and the first slot, configured with (HMAC-SHA1) challenge-response, will be used. For that function Windows is supported (see “Install” section).

To catch user input python’s Tk (tkinter) library is used to create a simple password input window. The appropriate response is saved for only 3 seconds by default to not have it exposed as soon as it’s used. The utility also supports the input of any integer which is then used as timer. Otherwise the environment is searched for PWCLIPTIME and uses the value of that environment variable as timer. The timer is used as time in which the received password stays in the paste buffer bevore its replaced by the previously copied value. As you may see there is an optional commet which is used as text notification displayed on the screen if set. Therefor python3’s gi notify2 is used which is another reason for discontinuing python2 support.

I would encourage you to bind pwclip to a shortcut within your X-Environment to have access to your stored passwords from within any program. For example i like binding it to Super-Middle-Mouse-Button for the pwclip default mode and Strg-Shift-Middle-Mouse-Button for the yubico mode. On Windows-Systems you need to create a link for it somewhere. When editing that link you may set a keyboard shortcut (could not find a nicer solution by now). The target for that link then whould be “%PYTHONINSTALLDIR%\scripts\pwclip.exe”.

I’ve been trying my best to keep the passwords secure from unwanted access BUT there is !NO GUARANTEE! that the passwords handled during runtime are safe from other users access (especially “root” on linux systems - help on that is very welcome). Please be aware of that!

Since version 1.2 openssl keys are supported. For the use with pwclip they will be converted to gpg-keys automaticly and gpgsm is used instead of gpg - openssl is not used for en/decryption to be precisely.

YAML-Format

---

realsystemuser:

- somename:

- Som3(rypt!cPass

- Some optional info to display as popup notification

- othername:

- Som3other(rypt!cPass

Installation

On Windows you need to install Python3 from http://python.org/ first. On most Linux distributions python will be part of the system. With Python installed, you can install the pwclip package from the Python-Package-Index (pyPI) by running:

pip3 install pwclip

and installing the dependencies (not managed by pip) manually.

Installing from a source distribution archive

To install this package from a source distribution archive, do the following:

1. Extract all the files in the distribution archive to some directory on your system.

2. In that directory, run: python setup.py install

Usage

Although is was planed as GUI-Program it’s also possible to be executed from terminals. For Windows, Linux and OSX there is an appropriate executable packed which might be executed like the following examples will show:

GPG-Mode

If there is an environment variable called GPGKEYS it will use those keys to encrypt on changes to the password file. To list the password file you may use the list switch followed by optional search pattern like:

pwcli -l

or

pwcli -l $PATTERN

as you can see the yaml format tends to be used for multiple user names to better manage large lists. By default the current users entrys will be listed only. To have them all listed (or searched for by the above pattern example) use:

pwcli -A -l $PATTERN

Yubikey-Mode

ykclip

The YKSERIAL environment variable is used if found to select the yubikey to use if more than one key is connected. Otherwise the first one found is chosen. Likewise it also accepts an option:

pwcli -y $YKSERIAL

To have it wait for a specific time like 60 seconds (bevore resetting the paste buffer to the previously copied value) the PWCLIPTIME environment variable is used or also the command accepts it as input:

pwcli -t 60 -l somename

Most of the options may be combined. For more information on possible options in cli mode please see:

pwcli --help

GUI-Modes

For the GUI-Mode just use one of the following commands, also accepting most of the commandline arguments:

pwclip

ykclip

Troubleshooting

When using the yubikey challenge-response mode there is a bug in the usb_hid interface. This is because of python2 => 3 transition, most likely and can be fixed by executing the following command:

sudo vi +':107s/\(.* =\).*/\1 response[0]/' +':wq' /usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/yubico/yubikey_4_usb_hid.py

Explained:

In line 107 of the file

/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/yubico/yubikey_4_usb_hid.py

the ord() coversion of the response:

r_len = ord(response[0])

needs to be replaced by:

r_len = response[0]

Credits

• Python3 developers

• stackoverflow.com for hosting endless threads of problems & trubleshooting

• Pyperclip for they excellent Windows & OSX clipboard code

• Yubico (cheap & solid HW-Security-Modules) & python-yubico developers

• GNU Privacy Guard (basic kryptography) & python-gnupg developers

• SonicLux for testing and telling me that a final version must not be 0.3.3 :D

I hope that this might be somewhat of help or at least be inspiring for own ideas. You’re alway welcome to leave me a message for requests, reviews or feature requests as well as bug reports: <[e-mail]>

Changelog

1.3.5 (current)

Released: 2018-05-06

• fixed bug when merging crypted dictionary resulting in a string where a dictionary should be

• fix bug when adding/changing/deleting entrys will not show result on cli

• minor update to error messages and small efficiency updates of output

• fixed nonsense and formatting in README

• fixed deb package dependencies

• readded description to __pkginfo__.py (dunno how it lost em)

• lots of changes to my build environment so files may have moved over the last releases

1.3.4

Released: 2018-04-28

• some more changes to build environment (not really of interest for pwclip)

• fixed locations in pkginfo to match index/download url, fixed license in “intended audience” classifiers and changed some release information

• some more changes for user dialogs in x mode like possible repitition of input as well as some more error messages

• implemented most commandline options in gui mode as well

• pwcli -o/–out now uses sys.stdout and pwclip -o/–out uses xvkbd

• yubikey function was missing selection of correct slot if one is set and now it is able to operate on any slot of any yubikey even if more than one key is attached

• some more changes merged from master whith different relationship to pwclip

• download link now points to pwclip in my debian repo for current version

• removed depricated dependencies from __pkginfo__ and deb/DEPENDS as i found out that they’ve never been used for packaging :-( i workaround building the package by hand for now

• fixed bug when merging passwords from yaml into passcrypt also the deletion of the plain-text password file when finished merging is working again

• made -p/–password & –comment independent from each other

1.3.3

Released: 2018-04-26

• made some more changes to docs and trying to add more of them by build environment

• fixed bug implemented with 1.3.2 which causes crash in any case while trying to create README

** hotfix release **

1.3.2

Released: 2018-04-25

• fixed typo in README and removed unnecessary debugging output

• replaced all xinput related libs into one class with functions using it as well as fixing the ValueError exception in xlib.xinput

• fixed MANIFEST pointing to non-existent doc folder and added lots of template files for future documentation :-)

• added compatibility for auto-paste into current focused window (if not executed via Keystroke in X11 while those, at least in my case would only log the output and i’ve found no way to prevnt it from doing so) by using xvkbd when gui-mode is used (pwclip/ykclip) - otherwise default print is executed to auto-paste the password

• finally fixed tab-completion bug and added autocompletion of commandline options as well as readding commandline options even for gui modes (pwclip/ykclip)

• implemented commandline options for password and comment even if it’s dangerous to use - at least for the password

• fixed filerotater function not setting file times correctly

• fixed indentation of old changelog messages to be manpage make compliant

• made some gui-dialog improvements like asking for repitition if input was not found in passcrypt

• [W] compatibility most certainly lost for now :-(

  had no time to fix the stuff implemented without testing till now