sphinx(1)

NAME
sphinx - command-line client for the SPHINX password manager

SYNOPSIS
sphinx init

echo “password” | sphinx create <user> <site> [<u><l><d><s>] [<size>] [<symbols>] [<target password>]

echo “password” | sphinx get <user> <site>

echo -e “oldpassword” | sphinx change <user> <site> [<u><l><d><s>] [<size>] [<symbols>] [<target password>]

[ echo “password” | ] sphinx commit <user> <site>

[ echo “password” | ] sphinx undo <user> <site>

[ echo “password” | ] sphinx delete <user> <site>

sphinx list <site>

sphinx healthcheck

sphinx qr [<svg>] [<key>]

In general if any operation requires a master(input) password, it is expected on standard input, and any resulting account (output) password is printed to standard output. In the examples we use echo but it is recommended to use getpwd(1) or similar tools to query and pass the input password.

DESCRIPTION
SPHINX – password Store that Perfectly Hides from Itself (No Xaggeration) – is an information-theoretically secure cryptographic password storage protocol with strong security guarantees, as described in the 2015 paper “Device-Enhanced Password Protocols with Optimal Online-Offline Protection” by Jarecki, Krawczyk, Shirvanian, and Saxena (https://ia.cr/2015/1099).

sphinx is the command-line client for the SPHINX protocol, it provides access to all operations over the life-cycle of a password: init, create, get, change, undo, commit, delete. Additionally it provides also operations that make this more user-friendly: listing of users associated with a host and export of the configuration using a qr code.

sphinx not only handles passwords, it is also able to handle (T)OTP 2FA and age keys. Additionally - if installed - sphinx also provides access to opaquestore(1), a simple tool that allows one to store secrets that need encrypted storage (like keys, phrases, or other data).

  INITIALIZING A CLIENT

        sphinx init

This creates a new master key for the client, which is used to address records on the sphinx server and authorize management operations on those records.

You SHOULD back up and encrypt this master key.

If you want to use sphinx on a different device you want to copy this master key also there. For copying this (and other settings) to the android client androsphinx we have the qr operation, see below.

This operation also creates a fixed healthcheck record on the server(s).

  CREATE PASSWORD
Creating a new password for a site is easy, pass your “master” password on standard input to the client, and provide parameters like in this example:

        echo -n 'my input password' | sphinx create username example.com ulsd 0 ' !"#$%&\'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\]^_`{|}~'

The parameters to the client are

•   Your input password on standard input. Since the input password is not used to input anything, you can actually use different input passwords for different user/site combinations. (Unlike with traditional password managers which have one master password that encrypts the whole database)

•   create for the operation, then

•   username for the username on

•   the site example.com then

•   the password constraints, see sections PASSWORD RULES and PREDETERMINED PASSWORDS for more info

If the command runs successfully - the resulting new high-entropy output password according to the given rules is printed to the console.

  GET PASSWORD
Getting a password from the sphinx oracle works by running the following command:

        echo -n 'my master password' | sphinx get username example.com

You supply your master password on standard input, provide the get operation as the first parameter, your username as the 2nd and the site as the 3rd parameter. The resulting password is returned on standard output.

  CHANGE PASSWORD
You might want to (or are forced to regularly) change your password, this is easy while you can keep your master password unchanged (or you can change it too, if you want). The command is this:

        echo -en 'my master password\nnew masterpassword' | sphinx change username example.com 'ulsd' 0 ' !"#$%&\'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\]^_`{|}~'

You supply your current master password on standard input, and separated by a new-line you also provide the new master password. The new master password can be the same as the old, but can also be a new password if you want to change also the master password.

You provide the change operation as the first parameter to the client, your username as the 2nd and the site as the 3rd parameter. You also can provide similar password generation rule parameters that were also used to create the original password, in case your account has new password rules and you want/have to accommodate them. For more information see the PASSWORD RULES and PREDETERMINED PASSWORDS sections below.

Your new new password is returned on standard output. IMPORTANT this only creates a new output password, but does not activate it. Running a get operation will still respond with the previous password, to activate the new password, you need to run a commit operation, see the next section:

  COMMITTING A CHANGED PASSWORD
After changing the password, you will still get the old password when running the get operation. To switch to use the new password you have to commit the changes with

        echo -n 'my master password' | sphinx commit username example.com

Depending on your rwd_keys configuration setting, you might have to provide your input password on standard input to this operation.

If all goes well, there is no output expected. If anything goes wrong, there is going to be an error message and a non-zero exit-code.

  UNDOING A PASSWORD COMMIT
If you somehow messed up and have to go back to use the old password, you can undo committing your password using:

        echo -n 'my master password' | sphinx undo username example.com

Depending on your rwd_keys configuration setting, you might have to provide your master password on standard input to this operation.

If all goes well, there is no output expected, otherwise there will be an error message and non-zero exit-code.

  DELETING PASSWORDS
In case you want to delete a password, you can do using the following command:

        echo -n "my master password" | sphinx delete username example.com

You provide the delete operation as the first parameter to the client, your username as the 2nd and the site as the 3rd parameter. This command does not provide any output on the console in case everything goes well, otherwise an error message and an non-zero exit code will signal a problem.

Depending on your rwd_keys configuration setting, you might have to provide your master password on standard input to this operation.

  QR CODE CONFIG
In case you want to use phone with the same sphinx server, you need to export your config to the phone via a QR code.

        sphinx qr

Will display a QR code containing only public information - like the server host and port, and whether you use rwd_keys. This is mostly useful if you want to share your setup with a friend or family.

If you want to connect your own phone to the setup used with pwdsphinx, you also need to export your client secret in the QR code:

        sphinx qr key

This contains your client secret, and you should keep this QR code confidential. Make sure there is no cameras making copies of this while this QR code is displayed on your screen.

If for whatever reason you want to display the QR code as an SVG, just append the svg keyword to the end of the sphinx qr command.

  HEALTHCHECK
If you have run the sphinx init command, then this also has created a fixed healthcheck record. You can simply check if your setup is ok, by running a sphinx healthcheck operation. You can also try doing the same by running a get operation like this:

        echo -n 'all ok?' |  env/bin/sphinx get healthcheck "sphinx servers"

It should output “everything works fine”. The difference is, that the health check only fetches the ratelimiting challenges from all servers and then aborts. While the get request will affect your ratelimiting difficulty if done to frequently.

  PASSWORD RULES
When creating or changing passwords you can specify rules limiting the size and characters allowed in the output password. This is specified as follows:

The letters ulsd stand in order for the following character classes: - u upper-case letters, - l lower-case letters, - s symbols and - d for digits.

The s is a short-cut to allow all of the symbols, if you are limited by the server which symbols to use, you can specify the allowed symbols explicitly. Currently these are the symbols supported (note the leading space char):

         !"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~

Be careful, if you specify these on the command-line you’ll have to escape the quotes you use for enclosing this list and possibly the backslash char that is also part of this list. In the create username example above the symbols are correctly escaped, in case you need to copy/paste them.

For examples how to use these see the section “CREATE PASSWORD” or “CHANGE PASSWORD”.

  DEFAULT RULES
If you do not provide password rules, they will be defaulting to `ulsd' and length as long as possible, which means 77 characters long passwords using all four character classes, providing 507 bits of entropy, way too much.

  RECOMMENDED OUTPUT PASSWORD LENGTH
It is recommended to set the output password size to maximum 12 chars in case of ulsd classes enabled. If you ever have to type in this output password on a TV remote, or in other stressful situations this will be a big relief. 12 character long passwords with full entropy and consisting of all possible printable ASCII chars are computationally impossible to bruteforce on current password cracking hardware, as they provide almost 80 bits of entropy, and 15 characters almost 99 bits of entropy.

  PREDETERMINED OUTPUT PASSWORDS
In case for some reason you cannot use random passwords with your account, or you want to store a “password” that you cannot change, like a PIN code for example, or a passphrase shared with your colleagues, you can specify a maximum 77 character long password, that will be generated by the SPHINX client for you. In that case the command line looks like this (note the same syntax also works for the change operation)

        echo -n 'my master password' | sphinx create username example.com "correct_battery-horse#staple"

In this case you cannot specify neither the accepted character classes, nor the size, nor symbols, these will be deducted from the predetermined password itself.

  Backward compatibility with v1 SPHINX servers/records
If you still have SPHINX records on the server that were generated using v1, - and you want to use them -, you have to specify this server also in the client section like you had to in v1. If there is no record found with v2 get operations sphinx will attempt a get request for a v1 style record. If a v1 style record is found, a new v2 style record is created automatically, so no need to check for v1 style records in this particular case anymore.

Unless you use also other clients that are v1 onl (like androsphinx) v1 records that are upgraded to v2 can be automatically deleted after a successful upgrade, for this set delete_upgraded to true in the [client] section of your sphinx configuration. This helps server administrators by keeping their “DB” clean, and having a means to see how many v1 records are still not upgraded.

  OUTPUT PLUGINS (TOTP & AGE)
It is possible to “store” TOTP secrets and age secret keys using sphinx. To store such a secret and have it automatically handled correctly (e.g. TOTP verification code output instead of the secret) just prefix your username with otp:// for TOTP support and with age:// for age key support. The latter, when queried will output a correctly formatted age private key.

Currently the following converters are supported:

  TOTP
Import a TOTP secret

        % getpwd | sphinx create otp://username example.com ABCDEF1234567890

Get a TOTP PIN:

        % getpwd | sphinx get otp://username example.com

  minisign
Create a new key and store the public key at /tmp/minisig.pub:

        % getpwd \
            | sphinx create minisig://user example.com >/tmp/minisig.pub

Create and Change SPHINX operations automatically return a public key.

Sign a file filetosign:

        % getpwd \
            | sphinx get minisig://user example.com \
            | pipe2tmpfile minisign -S -s @@keyfile@@ -m filetosign

The Get SPHINX operation returns a private key.

  Age
Generate an AGE key and store the public key:

        % getpwd \
            | sphinx create age://user example.com >/tmp/age.pub

Create and Change SPHINX operations automatically return a public key.

Decrypt a file using an AKE key from SPHINX:

        % getpwd \
            | sphinx get age://user localhost \
            | pipe2tmpfile age --decrypt -i @@keyfile@@ encryptedfile

The Get SPHINX operation returns a private key.

  SSH-ED25519
Create key and save public key:

        % getpwd \
           | sphinx create ssh-ed25519://test asdf >pubkey

Create and Change SPHINX operations automatically return a public key.

Sign a file:

        % getpwd \
           | sphinx get ssh-ed25519://test asdf \
           | pipe2tmpfile ssh-keygen -Y sign -n file -f @@keyfile@@ content.txt > content.txt.sig

The Get SPHINX operation returns a private key.

Verify file with public key:

        % ssh-keygen -Y check-novalidate -n file -f /tmp/ssh-ed.pubkey -s /tmp/content.txt.sig </tmp/content.txt

  OPAQUE-Store INTEGRATION
If you have opaque-store (see https://github.com/stef/opaque-store/) installed and configured (see opaque-stored.cfg(5)) correctly you get a number of additional operations, which allow you to store traditionally encrypted blobs of information. The following operations will be available if opaque-store is setup correctly:

        echo -n 'password' | sphinx store <keyid> file-to-store
        echo -n 'password' | sphinx read <keyid>
        echo -n 'password' | sphinx replace [force] <keyid> file-to-store
        echo -n 'password' | sphinx edit [force] <keyid>
        echo -n 'password' | sphinx changepwd [force] <keyid>
        echo -n 'password' | sphinx erase [force] <keyid>
        echo -n 'password' | sphinx recovery-tokens <keyid>
        echo -n 'password' | sphinx unlock <keyid> <recovery-token>

  How does OPAQUE-Store SPHINX integration work
In all OPAQUE-Store operations we first execute a SPHINX get operation, that calculates the password which is used with OPAQUE. This means that the input passwords for OPAQUE will be the strongest possible and essentially un-bruteforcable on their own (without SPHINX). Of course online bruteforce attacks are still possible going through SPHINX. But OPAQUE is able to detect wrong passwords and thus can lock your record after a pre-configured amount of failed attempts. Of course this does not apply to the operator of an OPAQUE server, who can circumvent the locking of records. And thus:

  A WARNING: don’t let one entity control enough of your SPHINX and OPAQUE-Store servers
As you can see every opaque-store op needs a password on standard input. This password is run through SPHINX, and the output password is used in the OPAQUE protocol as the input password. This also means, that if you use a single server setup for both SPHINX and OPAQUE-Store, the two servers should not be controlled by the same 3rd party entity, otherwise this entity is able to offline-bruteforce your SPHINX master password. If you use either of these services in a threshold setup, and these threshold servers are controlled by different entities, you should be ok, as long as no one controls a threshold number of oracles/servers.

  OPAQUE-Store CLI Parameters

  KeyId
Every operation provided by the OPAQUE-Storage (O-S) integration needs a “keyid” parameter, this references your record stored by O-S. Internally the client uses the configuration value id_salt, together with the name of the O-S server to hash the keyid parameter into a record id for the O-S Server. This means, that if you lose or change your id_salt parameter or the name of the O-S server, all your record ids will be different and inaccessible. So it is a good idea to make a backup of your configuration file containing these. Note this id_salt doesn’t really have to be secret, although it does provide another layer of security-by-obscurity if you do so.

  Forced operations
In the case that you are using a threshold setup, some operations (replace, edit, changepwd and erase) require that all servers successfully participate in the operation. This is to avoid, that the records on temporarily unavailable servers remain unchanged and lead later possibly to corruption. If you are sure however that this is ok, you can provide a force parameter on the CLI which reduces the number of servers successfully participating to the value of your threshold configuration setting.

  Store an encrypted blob

        getpwd | sphinx store <keyid> file-to-store

This simply does what it promises, stores the file-to-store encrypted on the OPAQUE-Store server, using a password derived from SPHINX. Note that this command outputs also a recovery-token, which you should keep safe in case your record gets locked.

  Retrieving an encrypted opaquestore blob

        getpwd | sphinx read <keyid>

Straightforward, no surprise. This gets your previously stored record and displays it on standard output.

  Overwrite an encrypted opaquestore blob

        getpwd | sphinx replace [force] <keyid> file-to-store

Whatever has been stored at keyid is now overwritten by an encrypted file-to-store. This only works, if there is already something stored at keyid. All servers must cooperate in this, if one or more are unavailable this will fail, unless force is specified and the threshold is matched, in which case the servers unavailable will be corrupted from this point on.

  Edit a opaquestore blob

        getpwd | sphinx edit [force] <keyid>

This operation fetches the file stored at keyid loads it into your editor (specified by the EDITOR environment variable) and stores the changes and saved file back on the same keyid overwriting the original.

  Change your password on an opaquestore blob

        getpwd | sphinx changepwd [force] <keyid>

This operation does a full change of passwords and keys. Even if you don’t change your own password that you provide to getpwd, SPHINX will change it’s own key, and thus change the output password which will be used for the password in OPAQUE-store finally resulting in a whole new and fresh encryption key for your file which gets re-encrypted with that.

  Delete a stored opaquestore blob

        getpwd | sphinx erase [force] <keyid>

Nothing surprising here, does what it promises, deletes the stored blob referenced by the keyid.

  Get a recovery token

        getpwd | sphinx recovery-tokens <keyid>

If your record is not locked, this operation gets you an additional recovery token.

  Unlock a locked opaquestore blob

        getpwd | sphinx unlock <keyid> <recovery-token>

If for some reason (someone online-bruteforcing your record, or you forgetting your master password) your record becomes locked by the servers, you can unlock it using a recovery token. This will also automatically retrieve the record - unless you supply the wrong password again.

SPHINX CONFIGURATION
The client can be configured by any of the following files:

•   /etc/sphinx/config

•   ~/.sphinxrc

•   ~/.config/sphinx/config

•   ./sphinx.cfg

Files are parsed in this order, this means global settings can be overridden by per-user and per-directory settings.

The client can be configured changing the settings in the [client] and the [servers] sections of the config file.

The datadir (default: ~/.sphinx) variable holds the location for your client parameters. Particularly it contains a masterkey which is used to derive secrets. The master key - if not available - is generated by issuing an init command. You SHOULD back up and encrypt this master key.

rwd_keys toggles if the master password is required for authentication of management operations.

The oracle is oblivious to this setting, this is purely a client-side toggle, in theory it is possible to have different settings for different “records” on the oracle.

validate_password Stores a check digit of 5 bits in on the oracle, this helps to notice most typos of the master password, while decreasing security slightly.

The userlist option (default: True) can disable the usage of userlists. This prohibits the server to correlate all the records that belong to the same sphinx user relating to the same host. The cost of this, is that the user has to remember themselves which usernames they have at which host.

Specify address and port for backward compatibility with an old v1 server. If there is no record found with v2 get operations sphinx will attempt a v1 style get request and see if the record is available from “old times”. If a v1 record is found a new v2 style record is created, so no need to send a v1 get request for this particular record anymore.

delete_upgraded enables automatic deletion of v1 records after automatically upgrading them to v2 records. Unless you use also other clients that are v1 only (like androsphinx) this is the recommended setting, it removes crust and enables server operators to see if their users are finally completely v2, and can disable v1 support.

The threshold option must specify the number of servers necessary to operate sphinx. If the [servers] section contains more than two entries, this value must be greater than 1 and less than the number of servers listed in the [servers] section: 1 < threshold < len(servers).

The `[servers]’ section contains subsections for each server like this:

        [servers]
        [servers.zero]
        host="localhost"
        port=10000
        ltsigkey = "32byteBase64EncodedValue=="

The subsections all have the the format [server.name]. This name can be freely chosen and can be a public value. it is important to never change it, as long as you want to access your passwords on this server. This name value is used together with other values to create unique record IDs. If you change the name the record IDs change, and you will not be able to access your old records.

The host and port should match what you set (or its admin publishes) in the oracle(1) server. The ltsigkey is the servers long-term signing key for threshold operations this should be a base64 encoded value. Alternatively you can also store the raw binary key in a file, which you then specify using the ltsigkey_path value instead. This key only needed for threshold operation, if you use SPHINX in a single-server setting you don’t need this.

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
You SHOULD back up and encrypt your master key. Hint you could do this using the qr key operation, recording all the other important details as well. Backing up your webauthn_data_dir from the [websphinx] section is also a good idea, in case you use the webextension and webauthn.

The rwd_keys configuration setting, if set to False protects against offline master password bruteforce attacks - which is also a security guarantee of the original SPHINX protocol.

The drawback is that for known (host,username) pairs the according record can be changed/deleted by an attacker if the clients masterkey is available to them. However neither the master nor the account password can leak this way. This is merely a denial-of-service attack vector. If rwd_keys is set to True, then this eliminates the denial-of-service vector, but also negates the offline-bruteforce guarantee of the SPHINX protocol. This setting is really a compromise between availability of account passwords versus the confidentiality of your master password.

The validate_password configuration setting if enabled, decreases security slightly (by 5 bits). In general it should be safe to enable.

The userlist configuration setting is by default enabled, and allows a server operator to correlate records that belong to the same SPHINX user on the same online service. If you have multiple accounts on an online service and all of them are handled by the same SPHINX server, the server operator can take note when a userlist record is updated and which SPHINX record belongs to this operation. This leaks some information, that can be used by an adversarial server operator to correlate records.

In this man page we are using echo only for demonstration, you should use something like this instead (or even directly getpwd(1) from the contrib directory if you are not interested in customizing):

        echo GETPIN | pinentry | grep '^D' | cut -c3- | sphinx create username example.com ulsd 0

Using pinentry you can go fancy and do double password input, and even have something checking password quality for you, check it out, it’s quite versatile.

REPORTING BUGS
https://github.com/stef/pwdsphinx/issues/

AUTHOR
Written by Stefan Marsiske.

COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2024 Stefan Marsiske. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html . This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO
https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/blog/posts/sphinx.html

https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/blog/posts/oprf.html

https://github.com/stef/opaque-store/

oracle(1), getpwd(1), opaquestore(1)