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While this might be a useful tool for Mac users, it's all hackers here, so:
* Most people do not have passwords in plain text — an SSH key protected with a passphrase is not "plain text", for instance
* Most people have encrypted home or full disk encryption
* How can we trust your crypto implementation?
* If we are talking about in-memory plain-text during use, how does this tool protect against it?
* Containerisation is a big topic when running untrusted software for exactly (but not just) this reason
* While passwords/tokens might carry a big risk depending on what you do, I find that I worry more about my local data compared to my remote data — and virtualisation or containerisation helps with that.
> Most people have encrypted home or full disk encryption
I don't see the point. Once your home is unlocked, every process can see the file contents
I'm not the author but i can probably answer some of these:
> * Most people do not have passwords in plain text — an SSH key protected with a passphrase is not "plain text", for instance
I think you'd be surprised how many SWE do actually have plain text secrets. For example, if you do everything correctly with AWS auth, you still have a plain text token in ~/.aws -- it's short lived (typically 8hrs IIRC), but it's still there
> * Most people have encrypted home or full disk encryption
Yes. But that addresses a completely different problem. One where the whole machine is lost and an attacker then has physical access to your machine. Not when the machine is already in use and you have a rogue agent or other process.
> * How can we trust your crypto implementation?
This is written in Go and Go's standard library already has crypto functions. So there wouldn't be any need for the authors to roll their own implementation. But since it's open source, you can always check the code yourself.
> * If we are talking about in-memory plain-text during use, how does this tool protect against it?
This tool doesn't advertise that feature. Which I'm guessing you already knew. macOS, like most popular operating systems, does already have kernel-level code that makes it harder for processes to read the memory of other processes that do not belong to it. It's not entirely impenetrable, but this tool I think goes far enough for most SWE's risk appetite. If the risk that you need to guard against is greater than that, then you'd be looking at VM-level isolation rather than this kind of tool.
> * Containerisation is a big topic when running untrusted software for exactly (but not just) this reason
Indeed. And while personally, I'd still recommend containerisation, that doesn't mean this kind of tool doesn't also have merit. For example containerisation can get complicated if you have several processes that might need to work against the same project.
> * While passwords/tokens might carry a big risk depending on what you do, I find that I worry more about my local data compared to my remote data — and virtualisation or containerisation helps with that.
This surprises me because even if you're not using cloud computing, your local machine is still typically just the development environment and it's your "remote" (whether that's in a DC somewhere or hosted on-prem) is where the actual data, compute and infrastructure exist.
* Dealing with encrypted files is easy, and more versatile than a generic wrapper. E.g. to load a secret environment: `eval $(age -d -i secrets.env.age)`. With the added bonus that it only relies on a trusted tool, age.
This looks like a really cool idea. But since it's a new project and has all the Claude stuff I immediately feel unsure about the solidity and reliability of a security-critical piece for software like that. I wish I could go back to my pre-LLM levels of skepticism.
A lot of this concern is ersatz and virtue signaling. Do you really think an llm cant code a fork/exec? Or that it can't setup a named pipe?
And what would be the other concerns? That you have a possibly malicious piece of software reading your secrets that you haven't encrypted?
That's literally the raison d'etre of this tool. By definition it's better than nothing.
For development on linux I like to use dotenvx, which lets you put encrypted secrets in an .env file and supply the private key separately.
I have a small wrapper script [1] that prompts for the private key which allows me to paste it from my password manager and launches a shell with the env variables decrypted. This allows me to avoid storing any secrets while still having shell session open where I can terminate and restart a server process for example without having to re-enter the secret all the time.
[1] https://gist.github.com/ryuuseijin/0cf6ab852fbb18d6702933a24...
The install procedure, for something that's supposed to be a security product:
curl -sL https://dl.jitpass.com/jitpass/jit/releases/latest/download/jitpass_darwin_arm64.tar.gz | tar -xz jit
sudo mv jit /usr/local/bin/
What is wrong with it?
that line just pipes a tar archive into tar to extract the binary, not an executable script to a shell. That said, brew install jitpass/tap/jitpass is the recommended way to install.
I agree that `curl | tar && mv` is not safer than `curl | sh`.
I've moved my secrets to 1Password Environments (https://www.1password.dev/environments), which works really well for everyday use.
It works with 1password cli (https://www.1password.dev/cli) to access for agents/scripts, and I get a nice UI to manage them in the 1password app.
But the IPC is process-wide, not vault-dependent. And requires touch approval on every access, without “trust this process for X minutes” possibility.
Other 1pass is a great UX. It was even greater before Electron refactor and non-subscription model.
I do the same indeed
You can do some of this with 1Password as well btw. Looks nice!
Thanks!
Great Implementation. I was always looking for a way to further lock down credentials on Mac machines in our org. This could be a great additional layer of defense against supply chain attacks.
Especially the 8 hours valid aws SSO access token felt super risky to have available in plain text. Would those those temporary credentials work as well?
to begin with, why not setting validity for 1hr? you don't need to onboard an untrusted tool then.
Fnox and Nono are the ones I know that do credentials proxying. That approach seems quite better than scanning a host file system for secrets.
I was trying out fnox recently. It won't allow me to enter the master password for keepassdb. I have to set FNOX_KEEPASS_PASSWORD.
A bit uncomfortable in leaving a secret in the history. Hence I was looking for a tool like this.
i wonder when Claude/Codex would start baking it as first-party features
Just a note, it’s on a Polyform Perimeter license.
Yes, but it's completely free for internal Personal and Company use.
I am actually building the exact same thing- encrypted vaults for files or folders, encrypted with a biometric gated key in the Secure Enclave!
I would have been interested if it was for Linux
Soon, it will, yes.
I don't know about how secure this is, but I just love the UX. Scanning and process grant are great features UX-wise.
The medicine did not actually cure my terminal illness, but it surely tasted great and made me feel good about myself.
I don't get why you would have PRODUCTION secrets in those local .env files. It should only be dev tokens.
This isn't just for local .env files. It can be quite common to need production tokens for cloud systems if you job requires any amount of ops. eg doing anything aws cli work may result in a token stored in ~/.aws
But even that aside, there's still merit in protecting rogue processes from trashing your non-production environments
I can't agree more.
Operating systems should work like Android currently does. Assuming all installed apps are potentially malicious and isolates each of them from the others and the OS. So even if an app is compromised there's not much it can do when it's installed.
All desktop and server operating systems currently assume the user should have "full control" making a single compromise fatal for the user or even an entire organization.
Interesting idea! How do you achieve it? Some kind of file system driver that recognises the calling process?
If only there was a Markdown file in the repo, that explains it. It could have a URL, say, https://github.com/jitpass/jit/blob/main/docs%2Fgetting-star...
How funny it may sound, but I was recently researching around for these kinds of tools for the same exact purposes.
Where I got stuck was at the Secure Enclave storing biometric-crypted payloads in the keychain, but couldn’t get it to work without Apple Developer subscription for code signing, otherwise these features wouldn’t work. And nobody with an Apple Developer subscription wants to sign someone else’s code, obviously. I really wonder why Apple itself, or any other reputable company, didn’t publish an utility like this already - it’s also a trust issue, when you run code like this.
The issue is that /usr/sbin/security invocations can be obscured to read from keychain, but require password typing every time, which is annoying. And lazy people can just hit “trust” by mistake. And then it’s just another clear text, but more annoying to reach.
Even though, it may be possible to show a touchID prompt in two other scenarios: - encrypting payload with a key stored in the enclave - then it becomes closer to SOPS approach. Age plugin for sops also supports using private keys on yubikey, by the way. But SOPS UX feels clunky. - just calling the APIs to show touchID as part of the application logic, like all modern password managers do. But then you really have to trust the password manager or the tool that does it, because touchID doesn’t equal security in this case.
Some password managers support CLI, SDK, and Terraform providers for working with their secrets, but that requires an IPC enabled, potentially increasing the risk for the other secrets stored in the same password manager.
Oh well, tough choices everywhere.
> potentially increasing the risk for the other secrets stored in the same password manager.
As pointed to me by a friend, this is one reason not to give in to the convenience of the secrets manager you already use.
My use case for fnox with keepassdb back-end was partially validated but as I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, having to set master password in an env var is a bit of snag for the workflow.
Snake oil claude slop. No other words for it.
If someone or something is executing code on your machine, you have already lost. Making it _slightly harder_ for it to eventually get your passwords anyway is mostly a performative action.
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Btw, enable "showdead" and enjoy OP actually pasting LLM output verbatim as a "defense".
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49317802
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49317819
Maybe claude can reword your claude slop for you. You can still edit those posts I guess.
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bukershok 2 minutes ago [dead] | parent | context | flag | vouch | favorite | on: Show HN: Laptop is the last place your secrets are...
Worth separating two things here.
That's curl | tar, not curl | sh, as a few people noted. But the real answer is: don't use it. The recommended install is brew install jitpass/tap/jitpass.
Releases are Developer ID signed and notarized by Apple. Homebrew quarantines its download and Gatekeeper checks it against the notarization ticket before it runs. jit doctor reports the Team ID it verified, so you can check rather than take my word for it. jit upgrade refuses to install anything whose signature and checksum don't both verify, with no override flag.
The tarball line is there for people without Homebrew, and it is the weaker path precisely because curl sets no quarantine bit, so Gatekeeper never consults the ticket. Point taken: leading with it in the README undercuts the argument on the same page. I'll flip the order.
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Sorry if this violates the "no dunking" rule or whatever, but this cancer needs to be eradicated.
Hypfer, I am a security leader at the age of 42 with more than 15 years of experience in the field, and I will tell you the truth: I lead a lot of cyber incidents. The purpose of this tool is to help you and companies protect yourselves from supply chain attacks and infiltrators for free no cost, no need for expensive 1Password tools. I put my heart into this tool, so give it a try and contact me directly if you need anything. I will be glad to get your feedback on the tool. No AI fluff :) linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/menitasa/
> If someone or something is executing code on your machine, you have already lost
This nonsensical attitude is thankfully dying out in favor of more sophisticated approaches.
on Linux use systemd-credentials. It already does that
Available since 2021 (systemd v250) and I just got to know. Better late than never I guess.
PS: Thank you!