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NOTICE WARNING: This application is no longer actively maintained or in use by the author. Use at your own risk.

NoVault: ultra simple and secure password management

Note: as of version 0.4.0 it is not expected that there will be breaking changes to this tool. I am now using novault as my own primary password manager.

NoVault is an ultra simple and secure password manager similar to Master Password but made to be much simpler and more auditable for developer minded people.

As the name implies, NoVault does not require storing your passwords in any kind of file or database. Instead, you remember a single password, which is cryptographically hashed with Argon2 and converted to a string using base64url. You only have to (semi-securely) share a tiny novault.secret file that gets generated at init time among your devices.

NoVault stores your configuration and sites in a human readable toml file, which you can save on sites like google drive, dropbox or even publicly on GitHub.

Advantages to NoVault over other password managers:

  • Simple: completely open source and about 1000 lines of code
  • Uses Argon2 for hashing, which is the winner of the 2015 Password Hashing Competition
  • Nobody except for you knows your password. It is not stored in any database and cannot be leaked by the application.
  • NoVault will never access the internet, so that eliminates an entire world of security vulnerabilities.
  • Each website get's its own individual salted password. So even if that password is compromised it will not compromise your master password.
  • Your passwords never exist in plain text, html or paste buffer -- NoVault takes control of your keyboard to enter the passwords.
  • It is safe to store your configuration in plain text anywhere, so it is easy to keep it in sync across your computers. Even if you DO loose your novault.sites file, you only typically only need to remember the site name to recover the password.
  • Written in a type safe language (rust)

(current) disadvantages:

  • Can only be used on GNU/Linux
  • Written by a complete amateur over a weekend in his spare time
  • Not even remotely audited by anyone with any cryptographic knowledge
  • Once you write a password manager you can never trust anyone ever again.
  • Hackers could eat your lunch and I provide no guarantees about the warranty or security of this software, so you can't sue me (sorry). On that note...

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Guide

Installation

The only way to install (currently) is through cargo:

cargo install novault

Basic Use

choosing a good password

Initialize your NoVault config file:

$ novault init

This will ask for a master password, choose a good one. It is better to make a long password that you can remember than a short one with lots of symbols. "correct horse battery staple" has high entropy but is pretty easy to remember.

This will create a randomly generated secret file at ~/.local/novault.secret. Keep this file relatively secure (see the "What you need to keep/remember" section below). Whatever you do, DON'T loose this file! The purpose of it is to make it so that an attacker needs both your master-password AND this file in order to crack your passwords. If you accidentally copy/paste your master password into Facebook, then that is bad... but you don't have to completely freak out. See section "I lost my master password..." below.

Once you have chosen your password, add a site:

$ novault loop
>> set [email protected] --notes "open source email"

After you have added your first site, a file will be created at ~/.config/novault.sites. This does not contain ANY information that could be used to derive your masterpassword, therefore it is safe to store in a public place (like GitHub).

For another example, setting the password and 4 digit pin of a bank might be done with:

>> set vitiral@bank
>> set pin.vitiral@bank --pin --fmt '{p:.4}'

The {...} syntax is the same as rust/pthon's string fmt syntax. p is the name of the password and everything after : tells how to format p. :.4 says to use "precision 4" which for strings (which p is) means string length of 4. If your site requires special characters you can add them like --fmt '{p:.32}!@#'. Obviously the characters don't provide extra security... but you are using a 32 digit random hash which is about as secure as anything can ever be.

Now you can get the site's password. NoVault will automatically validate that your password is the same one you used in novault init.

$ novault loop
>> get [email protected]
# ... Run `echo "ok" >> ~/.confg/novault.lock` through a key binding.
# ... NoVault will control your keyboard to type in your password securely

The sites you have added are stored in ~/.config/novault.sites by default. It is recommended that you back up this file and distribute it among your computers. I prefer to keep it in revision control on a public GitHub repo.

What you need to keep/remember

NEVER forget your password or loose your ~/.local/novault.secret file. If you do loose either then your passwords are completely unrecoverable.

Tips:

  • Choose a password that is easy to remember but hard to guess (see above)
  • Store your novault.secret file on a couple USB sticks. I keep one on my keychain and one in my office. I also keep it on the sdcard which stays in my laptop.
  • Put novault.secret on other computers you trust.

If possible, do NOT share your novault.secret file on the internet. If you DO put it online, the less public the better. Email/dropbox/google-drive are PROBABLY fine, but you never know how secure those sites are.

If you think your secret is compromised, you are probably okay... until you accidentally leak your master password. That is the purpose of the novault.secret file, it protects you from yourself -- and on security matters you are always your own worst enemy.

Note: changing your secret file is the same as changing your master password, ALL site passwords will change as well.

I exposed my master password or secret file, what do I do?

You need to change it, but you can probably finish your cup of coffee first.

The truth is, as long as attackers don't have BOTH your master password and your novault.secret file then there is literally no way on earth they will be able to do anything. The secret file contains a 256 character randomly generated ASCII string, which is required in order to be able to generate your site passwords. This means that as long as your secret file is safe, all the compute power on earth would require literally a billion years to crack your site passwords.

If a hacker somehow gets them both, then you are screwed. Probably a good idea to generate a new one of both just in case.

So, you have to change your master password but there is no rush. How do you do it?

Step 1: make a backup of your existing passwords

Run the following:

novault InSeCuRe --export > ~/backup.txt

This will put all your site passwords in plain text. Obviously you should only do this if you are about to change those passwords.

Step 2: delete/move your secret file and create a new one

Move ~/.local/novault.secret to ~/.local/novault.secret.bk and re-run novault init with your new password. Your ~/.config/novault.sites can stay the same.

Step 3: change the password for every site in your ~/.config/novault.sites

You should go to each site and change the password from what is in backup.txt to a newly generated password gotten with novault get <site>.

When you are done, you can delete backup.txt and novault.secret.bk or keep them, it doesn't really matter. I recommend keeping them in case you accidentally forgot to change the password for a site. Probably don't email them to your hacker ex-lover though...

Contributing

The deisgn documents are primarily hosted in design/. You can view them using artifact using art serve. They are also rendered here.

I welcome contributors, especially for security review. However, I will be pretty cautious about accepting large changes or new features as I don't want to compromise the security of the application.

LICENSE

The source code in this repository is Licensed under either of

at your option.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.