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.
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.
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.
The pattern of piping an arbitrary script to your shell? This should be an ordinary app bundle to drop into /Applications, or be distributed as an installer.
The readme even says so itself:
> A bad curl | sh, a sketchy npm install, or one of the AI agents now running in your editor with your full permissions.
And then, two paragraphs down, it suggests to do just that to install…
It's not piped to a shell, but to the tar program with specific parameters to directly unpack the tar.
You're still installing the program directly from github of course, instead of a source where hopefully a third party has also looked at it (like a package repository). But this is a lot better than the curl | sh pattern.
You're not downloading from github, but from dl.jitpass.com.
And an executable can do exactly the same as a shell script. The point is that whatever you're executing isn't verified, whether it's a shell script or a binary.
Is there McAfee for Mac? There's no real difference. You're trusting someone not to root your shit. Whether it's via curl, dmg, or apt, we have no idea who anybody really is, so it's all on an assumption that people aren't evil. Unfortunately it turns out that there are evil people out there, but doing it via curl | bash or downloading a dmg or though some app store, there's still evil that's gonna get you if you end up trusting in the wrong people.
But it’s not piping a script into the shell. It’s curl downloading a compressed archive and piping it to tar to decompress the program binary from the archive. Then moving the extracted binary into /usr/local/bin.
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.
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.
> 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.
keepass is great, because it doesn't require any service to operate - it's just a file. technically, you are responsible for backing it up, but more centralized options possible. I used it for 4 years pre-touchID era in a corporate setting and it worked great. For a single device. UX was very "open source", but hey - it's a free software with other focus in mind.
i know other people partitioning their secrets into multiple keepassx vault files, so the argument about using the same password manager can be interpreted differently.
I read the readme in full, I think that's an appropriate level of effort. Your link also still doesn't answer it, though it hints: 'A migrated .env is a live mount (a named pipe), not a plain file'. So is that a file system driver, or...?
Even https://github.com/jitpass/jit/blob/main/docs/getting-starte... says it's a local encrypted store - and that's repeated many times across the docs Claude-style - but it doesn't explain the mechanism whereby reading a file gets the results from that store.
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.
__
Btw, enable "showdead" and enjoy OP actually pasting LLM output verbatim as a "defense".
Maybe claude can reword your claude slop for you. You can still edit those posts I guess.
__
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.
__
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/
There is no objective or tangible reason you must give up at that stage. We all run untrusted code on our machines, whether it's third-party apps or visiting websites.
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.
hnlmorg, i must disagree with you on this one, that most people do not have passwords in plain text.
If you a developer or just using API in your day to day you will have secretes in plaintext on your projects.
* 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.
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:
What could possibly go wrong?What is wrong with it?
The pattern of piping an arbitrary script to your shell? This should be an ordinary app bundle to drop into /Applications, or be distributed as an installer.
The readme even says so itself:
> A bad curl | sh, a sketchy npm install, or one of the AI agents now running in your editor with your full permissions.
And then, two paragraphs down, it suggests to do just that to install…
It's not piped to a shell, but to the tar program with specific parameters to directly unpack the tar.
You're still installing the program directly from github of course, instead of a source where hopefully a third party has also looked at it (like a package repository). But this is a lot better than the curl | sh pattern.
You're not downloading from github, but from dl.jitpass.com.
And an executable can do exactly the same as a shell script. The point is that whatever you're executing isn't verified, whether it's a shell script or a binary.
> The point is that whatever you're executing isn't verified, whether it's a shell script or a binary.
The GP said:
> This should be an ordinary app bundle to drop into /Applications
There is no difference between downloading an app bundle that you drop into /Applications, and curling a binary that you put in /usr/local/bin/
The difference is you have the executable for examination (at least a quick virus scan) before you run it. Certanly not perfect, but what is?
You can still do that with their install instructions ;)
That is what I am saying, you are trusting them, but less then `curl | sh`
Is there McAfee for Mac? There's no real difference. You're trusting someone not to root your shit. Whether it's via curl, dmg, or apt, we have no idea who anybody really is, so it's all on an assumption that people aren't evil. Unfortunately it turns out that there are evil people out there, but doing it via curl | bash or downloading a dmg or though some app store, there's still evil that's gonna get you if you end up trusting in the wrong people.
Well trusting McAfee¹ is one of the choices.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee#Legal_issues
But it’s not piping a script into the shell. It’s curl downloading a compressed archive and piping it to tar to decompress the program binary from the archive. Then moving the extracted binary into /usr/local/bin.
Technically this one is piping it to tar? But I agree with the sentiment.
It's curl | tar, not curl | sh
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
I don't get why you would have PRODUCTION secrets in those local .env files. It should only be dev tokens.
I can't agree more.
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.
You can do some of this with 1Password as well btw. Looks nice!
Thanks!
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.
I would have been interested if it was for Linux
Soon, it will, yes.
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 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.
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.
keepass is great, because it doesn't require any service to operate - it's just a file. technically, you are responsible for backing it up, but more centralized options possible. I used it for 4 years pre-touchID era in a corporate setting and it worked great. For a single device. UX was very "open source", but hey - it's a free software with other focus in mind.
i know other people partitioning their secrets into multiple keepassx vault files, so the argument about using the same password manager can be interpreted differently.
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...
Please avoid the snark.
I read the readme in full, I think that's an appropriate level of effort. Your link also still doesn't answer it, though it hints: 'A migrated .env is a live mount (a named pipe), not a plain file'. So is that a file system driver, or...?
Even https://github.com/jitpass/jit/blob/main/docs/getting-starte... says it's a local encrypted store - and that's repeated many times across the docs Claude-style - but it doesn't explain the mechanism whereby reading a file gets the results from that store.
Just a note, it’s on a Polyform Perimeter license.
Yes, but it's completely free for internal Personal and Company use.
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.
__
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.
__
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.
__
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/
Ayy, finally, a human response. And it's an appeal to authority/seniority.
Can you just.. not?
The intended purpose of the tool is perfectly clear. There was never any confusion about it.
> 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.
What makes it nonsensical?
There is no objective or tangible reason you must give up at that stage. We all run untrusted code on our machines, whether it's third-party apps or visiting websites.
How does (the unfounded claim of) "everyone is doing [X]" make "we probably shouldn't be doing [X]" "nonsensical"?
Sounds unconvincing. Can you elaborate further?
on Linux use systemd-credentials. It already does that
Soon it will also be for Linux
Yes, you can even have it tpm-backed.
echo -n "sk-proj-12345..." | systemd-creds encrypt --with-key=tpm2 --name=openai_key - openai.cred
And then at runtime export OPENAI_API_KEY=$(sudo systemd-creds decrypt openai.cred)