pass-grave

An extension for pass (the standard Unix password manager) to easily hide the metadata of the password store

Motivation

Why a “grave”?

      pass by default shows meta-data in the password store. Someone with access
      to your computer might find ~/.password-store/email/google/johndoe@gmail.com
      and conclude you have an account with Google and the account name is
      "johndoe@gmail.com". The same for your banking information, etc.
      The idea for pass-grave comes from
      pass-tomb: https://github.com/roddhjav/pass-tomb#readme
      In order to hide this meta-data you can use pass-tomb to place the
      password store into a tomb (https://www.dyne.org/software/tomb/).
      The same you can do with this, pass-grave.
      A "grave" is similar to a tomb but a lot lighter and simpler.
      With "pass grave close" you place the complete passwordstore
      into the grave, and close the grave, reducing everything to a single
      file without any meta-data.
      With "pass grave open" you open the grave, take all the information
      out of the grave and restore the complete passwordstore to its former
      state.
      So, typically the first operation of a pass session is to open the grave
      and the very step is to close the grave.

Usage

Usage:
    pass grave open
        On the first run it creates a directory ".grave" in \$PASSWORD_STORE_DIR.
        By default this is ~/.password-store/.grave".
        If the grave directory with a grave exists it will open it and
        restore the full password store. Once restored the grave will be removed.
        The grave is represented with the file
        ~/.password-store/.grave/passwordstore.grave.tar.gz2.gpg.
        The grave is encrypted with the pass GPG key and hence
        the content of the grave and all its meta-data is protected and
        hidden.
    pass grave close
        If the grave does not exist, "close" creates a copy of the complete password
        store by creating a compressed tar-file with extension .tar.bz2 and
        encrypts it with the pass GPG key.
        Thereafter the password store is removed leaving only the grave file
        and other files that hold no meta-data (e.g. extensions, backups, gpg-id).
    pass grave help
        Prints this help message.
    pass grave version
        Prints the version number.

Examples

Example 1: Opening the grave

$ pass grave open

This opens the grave at the beginning of a session,
extracts and restores the password store from the grave file
and then removes the grave file.

Example 2: Closing the grave

$ pass grave close

This creates the grave, places the complete password store into it
and then removes the password store with its meta-data
(except some files holding no meta-data). All meta-data
is hiden now.
The grave file is a single compressed and GPG encrypted file.
The grave can be found at $PASSWORD_STORE_DIR/.grave
e.g. ~/.password-store/.grave/passwordstore.grave.tar.gz2.gpg.

Installation

For installation download and place this bash script file grave.bash into
the passwordstore extension directory specified with $PASSWORD_STORE_EXTENSIONS_DIR.
By default this is ~/.password-store/.extensions.

$ cp grave.bash ~/.password-store/.extensions

Give the file execution permissions:

$ chmod 700 ~/.password-store/.extensions/grave.bash

Set the variable PASSWORD_STORE_ENABLE_EXTENSIONS to true to enable extensions.

$ export PASSWORD_STORE_ENABLE_EXTENSIONS=true

Download and source the bash completion file pass-grave.bash.completion for bash completion.

$ source ~/.password-store/.bash-completions/pass-grave.bash.completion

Type pass grave close to create your first grave.

$ pass grave close

PS: The Makefile provided by @celenium can help you in the installation. Type make install.

Idea came from

• pass-tomb from https://github.com/roddhjav/pass-tomb#readme
• tomb from https://www.dyne.org/software/tomb/

Requirements

• pass from https://www.passwordstore.org/
• tar to be installed for zipping and compression.

Notes

Both files are tiny: 200 lines (script) and 23 lines (autocompletion) respectively. You can check them yourself quickly. No need to trust anyone.

Contributions

• Contributions and PRs are welcome.
• A big shoutout to the contributors so far: @celenium, @Inesgor, and @moppman.