pam_wtid VS secretive

Does watch unlock now work natively with pam_tid? I know as of at least a few months ago it would only work if you could use touch ID, i.e. when the laptop was open. If it was docked, it would fall back to password auth.

I wrote a patcher that changed this behavior, it patched pam_tid directly on your system and just updates the API Apple calls to allow unlocking with watch-only when touch ID is unavailable:

https://github.com/inickt/pam_wtid

Was a fun reverse engineering experience and wrote up some more info in the README.

Secretive might be what you're looking for: https://github.com/maxgoedjen/secretive

Good find! I was always curious how this worked.

I'm a big fan of tools like secretive[1] that can help solve this problem by using biometrics to shift the UX/security trade-off and thus make it feasible to always require some kind of authentication to sign a token with a key.

I'm not aware of any tools that do the same for Linux, and a quick Google search doesn't turn up much[2]. It does look like you can at least get a notification[3], though.

This could provide another layer of protection on the user's endpoint device in addition the network monitoring called out in the article. Defense in depth, and all that.

[1] https://github.com/maxgoedjen/secretive

[2] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/705144/unlock-an-ss...

[3] https://www.insecure.ws/2013/09/25/ssh-agent-notification.ht...

https://github.com/maxgoedjen/secretive

> Secretive is an app for storing and managing SSH keys in the Secure Enclave

Secretive, which replaces painfully managing SSH keys from the command line / editor. Getting a Touch ID prompt is so much better, though migrating computers will suck.

consider using a higher-security setup. Secretive is an SSH agent for MacOS that stores keys within the host's secure enclave, where they can't be copied off, and can optionally require touchid validation before the key is used. This way, if you forward it the key to an compromised host and an attacker tries to use them, it'll still require a fingerprint (but, balance it with the fact that Secretive doesn't have nearly as many eyeballs checking it, yet!). Likewise, yubikeys can be setup to store SSH keys inside them and require touch to use.

You can store them in the Secure Enclave on OSX and require TouchID to use the key for signing.

See: https://github.com/maxgoedjen/secretive

Not exactly connected but the same crowd interested in this topic may also be interested in this tool to store SSH private keys in the Secure Enclave, kind of like what can be done with a YubiKey:

https://github.com/maxgoedjen/secretive

I've been looking for something like this for 3-4 years but only found it six months ago (in an HN thread). I use separate keys for every use case, and now know every time a key is used for any purpose, whether it's connecting to source control or my text editor is connecting to a remote VM.

Only thing I haven't figured out is how to do git signatures with these sorts of keys, but I haven't debugged it at all.

On Macs, Secretive [0] is great. It creates keys in the secret enclave, from where they can't be read, only used for signing requests. TouchID authorisation is optional but it's so quick and easy that I keep it on for all keys.

It can also use Smart Cards (Yubikeys are called out by name in the readme).

A forwarded agent will have the same level of security, meaning that if the forwarded agent needs to use a key in Secretive, it will have to be authorised locally - and even if TouchID is disabled, you are notified if a key is used.

[0] https://github.com/maxgoedjen/secretive/