passage VS passphrase2pgp

passage

_o/ hi all, age author here!

The OP link is the spec, here's a few other things you might find interesting

- the Go reference implementation https://age-encryption.org

- the Go library docs https://pkg.go.dev/filippo.io/age

- the CLI man page https://filippo.io/age/age.1

- an interoperable Rust implementation by @str4d https://github.com/str4d/rage

- a YubiKey plugin by @str4d https://github.com/str4d/age-plugin-yubikey

- the draft plugin protocol specification (which we should really merge) https://github.com/C2SP/C2SP/pull/5/files?short_path=07bf8cc...

- a Windows GUI by @spieglt https://github.com/spieglt/winage

- a discussion of the authentication properties of age https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/age-authentication/

- a discussion of a potential post-quantum plugin https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/post-quantum-age/

- a password-store fork that uses age instead of gpg https://github.com/FiloSottile/passage (see also: how I use it with a YubiKey https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/passage/)

https://github.com/FiloSottile/passage and https://github.com/FiloSottile/passage/issues/24

Without looking close at your suggestion, you might want to look at passage [0] by the creator of age. It's a fork of pass [1] using age as the backend.

[0] https://github.com/FiloSottile/passage

I wanted to reduce the amount of key management in my life to the bare minimum. I don't use gpg for its intended purpose (maintaining a web of trust with folks that you communicate with), but rather only use it for Emacs file encryption and things like password-store (which I'm replacing with https://github.com/FiloSottile/passage and will also port the Emacs pass frontend to work with).

there in fact exists a pass-like interface for age: https://github.com/FiloSottile/passage

As far as I'm aware, Mnemonikey is the first of its kind, rhyming only with the related but conceptually different passphrase2pgp tool, from which I drew my original inspiration.

I think people should seriously consider using something like passphrase2pgp [0] in addition to a hardware key like this. That way you can have a brain key (hopefully generated with diceware or equivalent) to tie together day-to-day keys like this to a more permanent identity. I'm honestly surprised that strategy is not more widespread.

[0] https://github.com/skeeto/passphrase2pgp

Check out Chris Wellons' tool passphrase2pgp - it does exactly what you're describing by hashing an arbitrary input passphrase with Argon2.

So the easiest way to synchronize gpg keys I found is https://github.com/skeeto/passphrase2pgp - it generates a deterministic gpg key (also ssh keys, x509 certificates...) from a passphrase. Excellent tool

One way to circumvent this is to use a strong passphrase to deterministically generate the PGP/SSH key [1] to unlock other passwords. The SSH key could grant access to a remote server with backups and the PGP key could decrypt passwords using pass [2].

1. https://github.com/skeeto/passphrase2pgp

2. https://www.passwordstore.org/

I know there are tools that can generate GPG from arbitrary inputs, but what I'm really looking for is something with direct compatibility with BIP 39 or (BIP 44) phrases in particular.

What if https://github.com/skeeto/passphrase2pgp is not obviously the software to use, or doesn't exist at some later point?

My own tool, passphrase2pgp works this way. It generates both OpenPGP and SSH Ed25519 keys from a user-chosen passphrase, and it's designed to send the key straight into the ssh-agent on demand.

Derive my keypair entirely from a passphrase, with generous key stretching. I never need to worry about backing up my keys. I later extended this idea to OpenPGP and SSH, where I also exclusively use passphrase-derived keys: passphrase2pgp.

passphrase2pgp: for storing my PGP and SSH keys in my brain. Neither ever reside in permanent storage.