Add post "Using DisPass to manage your passwords"
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dispass_passwords.org
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#+TITLE: Using DisPass to manage your passwords
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*tl;dr*: If you don’t care about any of the back story and just want
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to know how to use DisPass to manage passwords, skip to [[Managing
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passwords]] for instant gratification.
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* Introduction
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DisPass is a project that was started, and is still maintained, by a
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[[https://babab.nl][friend]] and former colleague of mine. I've been using it for quite
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some time. It helps me feel safe online, knowing that all my
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accounts have different and strong passwords.
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DisPass uses algorithms to make reproducible passphrases. Making it
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a kind-of functional password manager, just like Haskell is a
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functional programming language and Guix is a functional package
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manager. Given the same input DisPass will always produce the same
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output. This means that the generated passphrases are never stored
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anywhere and cannot be discovered by crackers[fn:1] and the like.
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The input for DisPass consists of a label, algorithm, length,
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possibly a sequence number (depending on the algorithm used) and
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finally a password. All but the label and password have some default
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value, but can also be specified through command-line switches.
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* The Labelfile
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Being a functional anything usually means that whatever you're using
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doesn't maintain any state. This can be true for DisPass, but isn't
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necessarily so. It can be a challenge to remember the size,
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algorithm and sequence number for a large number of labels, so there
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is the labelfile.
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The labelfile is normally located in either
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~$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dispass/labels~ or ~$HOME/.dispass/labels~, but
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can also be specified on the command-line. It contains the metadata
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for the labels, and the labels themselves. This lets you run
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something like:
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: dispass generate foobar
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And it'll know the size, algorithm and sequence number for the label
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“foobar”, assuming you’ve saved it to the labelfile. The labelfile
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is unencrypted, but this information is useless as long as nobody
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knows the password(s) you use to generate the passphrases.
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* Setting up
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DisPass is easy to install if you have either Archlinux or pip
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installed. Windows is a bit more problematic and I don’t even know
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how to get started on a Mac personally, but there is no reason it
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can’t work. It doesn’t have many dependencies, so you don’t need to
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install anything else first.
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The latest release is quite old, but a new release should be coming
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soon. There haven’t been too many developments since version
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0.3.0-dev because it basically does what it needs to do, and the
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user base is currently very small, so bugs might not be encountered
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too quickly. Don’t think that it’s an abandoned project, if you look
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at it’s [[https://github.com/babab/DisPass][github]] page you’ll see that it’s seen a bit of development
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again as of late.
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In the case of Archlinux I’ve provided packages in the AUR for both
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[[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python2-dispass/][python2-dispass]] version 0.2.0 and [[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python2-dispass-git/][python2-dispass-git]]. Installing
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either of these like any regular old aur package will get you set
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up. Incidentally, if you’re using Archlinux on x86_64 and have the
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testing package repository enabled, you could also use [[https://ryuslash.org/packages/][my package
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repository]], though no guarantees that it’ll ever work are given
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there.
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For a general pip installation it should be as easy as running:
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: sudo pip install dispass
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* UIs
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Seeing as how my friend would like it to be generally useful, and
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he’s a VIM user, there is both a GUI and CLI interface. Since I’m an
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Emacs user I’ve created an Emacs and a Conkeror interface for it as
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well.
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** CLI
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The CLI is what gets the most attention and gets developed the
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most. I will be working with this in the [[Managing passwords]]
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section.
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** GUI
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There is a basic GUI included with dispass, it can be started with
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either the ~gdispass~ or the ~dispass gui~ commands. It requires
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tkinter to be installed. It doesn't do everything the CLI does, but
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there are plans to improve it and use a different gui library (such
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as Qt). In some situations it can copy the generated passphrases
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directly to the clipboard, but this is only true on GNU/Linux, not
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on Windows.
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** Emacs
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I wrote an Emacs interface when I started using DisPass. It tries
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to copy the generated passwords directly to the clipboard, instead
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of needing the user to copy it manually as the CLI does. It can
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also insert generated passphrases into a buffer, such as the
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minibuffer.
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It's available on [[https://github.com/ryuslash/dispass.el][github]].
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** Conkeror
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I also wrote a Conkeror interface some time later, because I didn't
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want to keep copying and pasting the passphrases through one of the
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other interfaces (usually Emacs). It inserts the generated
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passphrases into the focused input.
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It's also available on [[https://github.com/ryuslash/cdispass][github]].
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** Wishlist
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As I mentioned, the idea is to expand the GUI and use a different
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gui library for it, to make it look a little better. The
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functionality should also be extended to do everything the CLI
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does.
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A Firefox extension is also still on the list of desirable
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interfaces. I'm not sure how plausible it is with the new
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WebExtension plugin api, I haven't looked into it yet. I don't
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think chrom(e|ium) allows developers to call external programs,
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which is an obstacle, but I haven't looked at this either.
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* Managing passwords
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Now for the real fun. Generating passphrases is simple. Use the
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~generate~ command:
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: dispass generate foobar
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If no entry exists in the labelfile for ~foobar~, it uses the
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defaults, which at the time of writing are a length of 30, and the
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algorithm ~dispass1~. This algorithm doesn't use a sequence
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number. It can generate more than one passphrase at a time.
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The generated passphrases are presented in an ncurses screen so they
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aren't kept in your terminal emulator's scrollback history, at least
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in some cases. You can use the ~-o~ switch to do away with the
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ncurses screen and just output a line for each generated
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passphrase. Together with something like awk this can be used to
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directly send some command the passphrase it needs. For example, if
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the program ~foo~ needs a password from stdin, you could use:
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: dispass generate -o foobar | awk '{ print $2 }' | foo
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You can specify a different length, algorithm and sequence number by
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using command line switches. For example, I normally prefer the
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~dispass2~ algorithm since it adds a sequence number. For some crazy
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reason the place I use the passphrase limits it to a length of 16
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characters and I've had to change my password twice, so I use a
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sequence number of 3. I could use:
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: dispass generate -l 16 -a dispass2 -s 3 foobar
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It would be difficult to remember all this, so I personally would
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add it to the labelfile. To do this I can use the ~add~
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command. Basically this is:
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: dispass add foobar
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This creates an entry in the label file with the same default values
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as the generate command: a length of 30 and using the ~dispass1~
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algorithm. To use the values we used before we can instead do:
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: dispass add foobar:16:dispass2:3
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This way we can add multiple entries with different values at once:
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: dispass add foo:16 bar::dispass2:2
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This would add the ~foo~ label with a length of 16, using the
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default algorithm and the label ~bar~ with the default length, using
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the ~dispass2~ algorithm and the sequence number 2. As you can see
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you can omit any trailing parameters and leave any parameters in
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between empty to use their default values.
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If you added it before I showed you the extended add syntax you can
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use ~update~ to change an existing entry in the labelfile:
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: dispass update foobar 13:dispass2:3
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Unlike the ~add~ command, the ~update~ command only updates one
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label at a time.
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Now, the place I use my password was cracked by crackers[fn:1], my
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password was stolen. That's no biggie. I use the ~list~ command to
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check what my sequence number is:
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: dispass list
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Then I can update my labelfile and use a new sequence number:
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: dispass update foobar ::4
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I could also use the convenient ~increment~ command:
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: dispass increment foobar
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Everytime the sequence number is changed the input changes and so
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does the passphrase. So a simple call to the ~increment~ command
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will completely change your passphrase. This is nice, because
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otherwise I'd have to change either the label or the password used
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to generate the passphrase.
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Actually, I just quit the job where I used my ~foobar~ label. I
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still use many other labels and don't want my list to get too big. I
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also don't want to delete the label in case I ever need to get back
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in there, so I just disable it:
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: dispass disable foobar
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This keeps it in the labelfile, but commands such as ~list~ don't
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show it anymore. But then they really need me back, and since I'm
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now a freelance worker I can accommodate them, so I enable my label
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again:
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: dispass enable foobar
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But now the place where I use the ~foobar~ label has gone out of
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business (I mean, come on, using a maximum password length of 16 and
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getting cracked by crackers all the time, are you really surprised?)
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and their site has been taken offline. Now I really have no reason
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to keep this label around, so I remove it:
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: dispass remove foobar
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* Cons
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Yes, this is an excellent project and I'm not just saying that
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because a friend of mine wrote it. There are some things that it
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just isn't suited for.
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When sharing a single account with someone else (don't do this!),
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you can't expect the other party to use the same label and password
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to generate the passphrase, if they're even tech-savvy enough to use
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DisPass just like you. It also increases the amount of information
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you need to remember to use DisPass. There are better programs to
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store pre-generated passwords.
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Due to the way the current algorithms are implemented there is a
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limit to the length of the passphrases and that limit isn't entirely
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consistent. This is only a problem when you need passphrases of more
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than 100 characters, and I haven't had that problem yet.
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* Footnotes
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[fn:1] I refuse to use the term hackers, because to me that means
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something completely different, and I hope to you as well.
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