Goldwarden

Goldwarden is a Bitwarden compatible CLI tool written in Go. It focuses on features for Desktop integration, and enhanced security measures that other tools do not provide, such as:

• Support for SSH Agent (Git signing and SSH login)
• Support for injecting environment variables into the environment of a cli command
• System wide autofill
• Biometric authentication (via Polkit) for each credential access
• Vault content is held encrypted in memory and only briefly decrypted when needed
• Kernel level memory protection for keys (via the memguard library)
• Additional measures to protect against memory dumps
• Passwordless login (Approval of other login)
• Fido2 (Webauthn) support
• more to come...?

The current goal is not to provide a full featured Bitwarden CLI, but to provide specific features that are not available in other tools. If you want an officially supported way to manage your Bitwarden vault, you should use the Bitwarden CLI (or a regular client). If you are looking to manage secrets for machine to machine communication, you should use bitwarden secret manager or something like hashicorp vault.

Parts of the code still need major refactor, and the code needs more testing. Expect some features to break. Setup is a bit involed atm.

Requirements

Right now, Goldwarden is only tested on Linux. It should be possible to port to mac / bsd, I'm open to PRs. On Linux, you need at least a working Polkit installation, and a pinentry agent are required.

Installation

To build, you will need libfido2-dev. And a go toolchain.

Additionally, if you want the autofill feature you will need some dependencies. Everything from https://gioui.org/doc/install linux and wl-clipboard (or xclipboard) should be installed.

Run:

go install github.com/quexten/goldwarden@latest
go install -tags autofill github.com/quexten/goldwarden@latest

or:

go build
go build -tags autofill

Make sure you have the binary in your path. Next, you have to set up the polkit policy. Copy com.quexten.goldwarden.policy to /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/. Consider having your shell source the goldwarden.env file, and edit it to your needs.

Finally, make the daemon auto start:

 ~/.config/systemd/user/goldwarden.service

[Unit]
Description="Goldwarden daemon"

[Service]
ExecStart=BINARY_PATH daemonize

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

where BINARY_PATH should be replaced by the path to the goldwarden binary.

and enable it:

systemctl --user enable goldwarden
systemctl --user start goldwarden

Design

The tool is split into CLI and daemon, which communicate via a unix socket.

The vault is never written to disk and is only kept in encrypted form in memory, it is re-downloaded upon startup. The encryption keys are stored in secure enclaves (using the memguard library) and only decrypted briefly when needed. This protects from memory dumps. Vault entries are also only decrypted when needed.

When entries change, the daemon gets notified via websockets and updates automatically.

The sensitive parts of the config file are encrypted using a pin. The key is derrived using argon2, and the encryption used is chacha20poly1305. The config is also only held in memory in encrypted form and decrypted using key stored in kernel secured memory when needed.

When accessing a vault entry, the daemon will authenticate against a polkit policy. This allows using biometrics.

Usage

Start the daemon:

goldwarden daemon

Set a pin

goldwarden set pin

Login

goldwarden login --email <email>

Create an ssh key

goldwarden ssh add --name <name>

Run a command with injected environment variables

goldwarden run -- <command>

Autofill

goldwarden autofill --layout <keyboard-layout>

(Create a hotkey for this depending on your desktop environment)

SSH Agent

Screencast from 2023-08-03 02-14-45.webm

The SSH agent listens on a socket on ~/.goldwarden-ssh-agent.sock. This can be used f.e by doing:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=~/.goldwarden-ssh-agent.sock ssh-add -l

Beware that some applications do ssh requests in the background, so you might need to set the env variable in your shell config.

To add a key to your vault, run:

goldwardens ssh add --name "my key"

Alternatively, use one of the gui clients. Create an ed25519 key:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ./id_ed25519

Then create a secure note in bitwarden:

custom-type: ssh-key
private-key: <contents of id_ed25519> (hidden field)
public-key: <contents of id_ed25519.pub>

Then add the private key to bitwarden. The public key can be added to your github account f.e.

Git Signing

Screencast from 2023-08-03 02-17-24.webm

To use the SSH agent for git signing, you need to add the following to your git config:

[user]
        email = <your email>
        name = <your name>
        signingKey = <your public key>
[commit]
        gpgsign = true
[gpg]
        format = ssh

Environment Variables

Screencast from 2023-08-03 02-25-30.webm

Goldwarden can inject environment variables into the environment of a cli command.

First, create a secure note in bitwarden, and add the following custom fields (using restic as an example):

custom-type: env
executable: name_of_executable
# env variables
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: <your access key>
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: <your secret key> (hidden)
RESTIC_PASSWORD: <your restic password> (hidden)
# optional
RESTIC_REPOSITORY: <your restic repository>
...

Then, run the command:

goldwarden run -- <command>

I.e

goldwarden run -- restic backup

You can also alias the commands, such that every time you run them, the environment variables are injected:

alias restic="goldwarden run -- restic"

And then just run the command as usual:

restic backup

Autofill

Screencast from 2023-08-03 02-13-15.webm

The autofill feature is a bit experimental. It autotypes the password via uinput. This needs a keyboardlayout to map the letters to keycodes. Currently supported are qwerty and dvorak. goldwarden autofill --layout qwerty goldwarden autofill --layout dvorak

You can bind this to a hotkey in your desktop environment (i.e i3/sway config file, Gnome custom shortcuts, etc).

Login with device

Approving other devices works out of the box and is enabled by default. If the agent is unlocked, you will be prompted to approve the device.

Future Plans

Some things that I consider adding (depending on time and personal need):

• Paswordless sign in
• Regular cli managment (add, delete, update, of logins / secure notes)
• Scripts to properly set up the policies/systemd/etc.

If you have other interesting ideas, feel free to open an issue. I can't promise that I will implement it, but I'm open to suggestions.

Unsuported

Some things that are unsupported and not likely to develop myself:

• MacOS / BSD support (should not be too much work, most things should work out of the box, some adjustments for pinentry and polkit would be needed)
• Windows support (probably a lot of work, unix sockets don't really exist, and pinentry / polkit would have to be implemented otherwise. There might be go libraries for that, but I don't know)
• Send support
• Attachments
• Credit cards / Identities