This is a password wallet, based on an article in Linux Journal #165 by Carl Welch. It was originally strictly a command line tool. I’ve modified it extensively to be interactive.

Problems with existing programs

There are numerous problems with most existing password wallet programs. Here are some.

  1. Many password wallet programs must be paid for or require commercial software. This introduces no end of complications. Why should you have to pay for the right to encrypt and decrypt your own passwords? What happens if the company goes out of business or is bought by some other company which isn’t particularly friendly to users of the program? Is the company storing your passwords in some sort of cloud account?
  2. Most password managers let you store a password for a given site and no more. What if you want to store a username, a URL, some security questions and their answers (like banking sites)?
  3. Password programs may or may not use an encryption method you are familiar with, or they may not even tell you what method they use. If you want to change password managers, you’ll be hard pressed to work out how.

Requirements

The following are programs which must be installed for Wallet to run:

Wallet will test for the presence of these programs when it runs, and abort with an error message if it finds one of them missing.

Installation

Copy the wallet program to some executable directory. Copy the .walletrc to your home directory.

Operation

Wallet encrypts an entire file of whatever you like. Ideally, you will organize your entries logically, but it’s up to you. Wallet uses GPG to encrypt and decrypt the file. It is a bash script meant to run under Linux.

When you start the program, you are presented with a menu of three options:

  1. View File: This asks for your master password and then decrypts the file, feeding it to less to allow you to view the file. If the file doesn’t exist, it attempts to create it.
  2. Edit File: This asks for your master password, decrypts your file, and opens the editor, allowing you to edit the file.
  3. Different File: This asks for your master password, asks for the name of the file to open, and attempts to open it for viewing. If the file doesn’t exist, it attempts to create it.

The Wallet program relies on a file called ~/.walletrc, which contains two values. The first is

WALLET_FILENAME=~/.wallet.gpg

This is your password file. You can rename it as you like. The second value is:

VISUAL=vim

This is your editor. You can change it to nano, or some other editor you prefer.

.walletrc is included with this distribution.

If you need to create a “clear text” version of your password file, you need to launch Wallet and opt to edit the file. Once in your editor, you must use whatever editor option allows you to store your data in a different file, which it will do unencrypted.

Using an existing password file

When you first start up, use the default file, and select the “Edit File” version. Once in the file, copy and paste from your existing clear text password file into the file you’re editing.

Security

I am not a security expert or a hacker, nor have I consulted one in building this application. It is possible that, while wallet is running, it could expose your password file to others. Thus, I recommend you run this application on your local machine, and close it when it’s not in use. When Wallet is not in use, your password file is suitably encrypted.

License

This software is provided “as is”. I make no claims for its suitability to any purpose. Your use of it is governed under the GNU Public License, version 2.0. This means you can use it or alter it in any way you like. And you may distribute it altered or unaltered as you like, so long as you include the source code (which is the script itself in this case).

Wallet can be obtained on Gitlab.