envchain - set environment variables with macOS keychain or D-Bus secret service

What?

Secrets for common computing environments, such as AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, are set with environment variables.

A common practice is to set them in shell's intialization files such as .bashrc and .zshrc.

Putting these secrets on disk in this way is a grave risk.

envchain allows you to secure credential environment variables to your secure vault, and set to environment variables only when you called explicitly.

Currently, envchain supports macOS keychain and D-Bus secret service (gnome-keyring) as a vault.

Don't give any credentials implicitly!

Requirement (macOS)

• macOS
  • Confirmed to work on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), macOS 10.12 (Sierra).
  • OS X 10.7 (Lion) or later is required, but not confirmed

Requirement (Linux)

• readline
• libsecret
• D-Bus Secret Service
  • GNOME keyring is a common (and only?) implementation for it

Installation

From Source

$ make

$ sudo make install
(or)
$ cp ./envchain ~/bin/

Homebrew (OS X)

brew install envchain

Usage

Saving variables

Environment variables are set within a specified namespace. You can set variables in a single command:

envchain --set NAMESPACE ENV [ENV ..]

You will be prompted to enter the values for each variable. For example, we can set two variables... AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY here, within a namespace called aws:

$ envchain --set aws AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
aws.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: my-access-key
aws.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: secret

Here we define a single new variable within a different namespace:

$ envchain --set hubot HUBOT_HIPCHAT_PASSWORD
hubot.HUBOT_HIPCHAT_PASSWORD: xxxx

These will all appear as application passwords with envchain-NAMESPACE in the data store (Keychain in macOS, gnome-keyring in common Linux distros).

Execute commands with defined variables

$ env | grep AWS_ || echo "No AWS_ env vars"
No AWS_ env vars
$ envchain aws env | grep AWS_
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=my-access-key
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=secret
$ envchain aws s3cmd blah blah blah
⋮

$ envchain hubot env | grep AWS_ || echo "No AWS_ env vars for hubot"
No AWS_ env vars for hubot
$ envchain hubot env | grep HUBOT_
HUBOT_HIPCHAT_PASSWORD: xxxx

You may specify multiple namespaces at once, with separating by commas:

$ envchain aws,hubot env | grep 'AWS_\|HUBOT_'
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=my-access-key
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=secret
HUBOT_HIPCHAT_PASSWORD: xxxx

More options

--list

List namespaces that have been created

$ envchain --list
aws
hubot

--noecho

Do not echo user input

$ envchain --set --noecho foo BAR
foo.BAR (noecho):

--require-passphrase

Always ask for keychain passphrase

$ envchain --set --require-passphrase name

--no-require-passphrase

Do not ask for keychain passphrase

$ envchain --set --no-require-passphrase name

Screenshot

OS X Keychain

Seahorse (gnome-keyring)

Author

• Sorah Fukumori [email protected]
• eagletmt

License

MIT License