drake

With drake you can easily generate strong and unique passwords for every website. The passwords are not stored anywhere and can be algorithmically generated on any computer. All you need to remember is a single master password, which you will use for every website; and something that identifies the account, such as the website itself or an email address. For example, to generate a password for my Gmail account I might do something like this*:

$ drake -iS 2
Enter seed #1: my master password
Enter seed #2: gmail
78u+%oQ&A0M9tBXy

The output, /um0]_uUxx<xoPdp, will always be the same if the same seeds ("my master password" and "gmail" in this case) are entered. The output will be completely different when the second seed is changed, for example:

$ drake -iS 2
Enter seed #1: my master password
Enter seed #2: facebook
F#,Oqe0\;-L@WTw=

With the default settings you will generate a sixteen-character combination of 95 possible characters. This means that the number of possible passwords is 95¹⁶ ≃ 4.4·10³¹.

*For a non-interactive invocation use drake -s "my master passwordgmail", which returns the password directly.

Features

• Manage passwords as explained above
• Every option can be entered both interactively and directly
• Options to control:
  • Password length
  • Number of passwords
  • Password seed
  • Included character sets to be selected from (lowercase, uppercase, digits and punctuation)
  • Save the password(s) to the clipboard
  • Hide input from prying eyes
  • Gauge password strength (entropy, cracking time, etc)
  • Obfuscate a simple password into a more complex one
• Future features include:
  • Text and file encryption with bcrypt and other algorithms
  • Encrypted password databases
  • Password hashing and salting functions

The various features are explained in detail in the usage examples section below.

Please report bugs or suggest features on the issues page.

Setup

Linux

Download drake and change to its directory:

git clone git://github.com/haukurpallh/drake.git; cd drake

Install drake:

python setup.py install

Execute python setup.py uninstall to uninstall drake.

Usage examples

Type drake -h to invoke the help message:

$ drake -h
usage: drake.py [-h] [-v] [-l [NUM]] [-n [NUM]] [-S [NUM]] [-s [STR]] [-i]
                [-c] [-C] [-g [STR]] [-o [STR]] [-x [STR]]

drake - password and encryption utilities

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -l [NUM], --length [NUM]
                        Password length. The default is 16.
  -n [NUM], --number [NUM]
                        Number of passwords. The default is 1.
  -S [NUM], --seeds [NUM]
                        Number of seeds. The default is 1.
  -s [STR], --seed [STR]
                        The seed for the pseudo-random generator.
  -i, --interactive     Enter the necessary data interactively. By default 
                        all data is entered via the options.
  -c, --clipboard       Save the password(s) to the clipboard. This option 
                        is redundant with -C or --cloak.
  -C, --cloak           Hide the input and the output. The password(s) are
                        saved to the clipboard.
  -g [STR], --gauge [STR]
                        Gauge the strength of an input password.
  -o [STR], --obfuscate [STR]
                        Obfuscate an input password. If not used with the
                        interactive flag (-i) use the form
                        "string,alignment" where alignment can be either
                        left or right.
  -x [STR], --character-sets [STR]
                        Control which character sets are used in the
                        generator. Available character sets are lowercase
                        and uppercase characters, digits and all
                        punctuation symbols. This constitutes all the
                        printable characters, 95 including whitespace
                        (' '). The option can contain one or all of the
                        initials of the character sets, for example, use
                        'lud' for an alphanumeric password.

This message lists all the available options at this time. The brackets mean that what's inside them is optional. If you run drake -l for example, the -l flag is ignored because it doesn't have a value (as opposed to drake -l 16). However, drake -il will assume interactive mode and ask for a value. If no option is specified, the output is a 16-character long password containing all printable characters and space (95 characters total):

$ drake
R&Kp$A/>plqe]c<j

To control the number of passwords and their length, use the -n and -l flags:

$ drake -n 3
o`'O=tq0K&{jUCzI
3X0E>[#ksNO[%4Jg
Of%W32q)5O,<n~2V

Or if you want a 20-character long password (the -i flag is unnecessary):

$ drake -il
Enter the length of the password(s): 20
".@|,1/MWCbRozd[%T7g

Or combining these two options:

$ drake -n 3 -l 20
lE32MZvL:PfT2TG ]@1b
JH=8Ib|*;5L_J<r>(_f1
H-#,vGm_Ki %4[ha^{Sg

If you don't want or can't use all the 95 printable characters used by default (some websites have stupid password policies), you can use the -x option. You need to specify the initial(s) (in lowercase) of the character set(s) you want to include, l for lowercase, u for uppercase, d for digits and p for punctuation and symbols. For an alphanumeric password you would do the following:

$ drake -x lud
LkxaotIS6s7vQXBe

Or with the -i flag:

$ drake -ix
Available character sets:
Lowercase: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Uppercase: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Digits: 0123456789
Punctuation symbols: !"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~
Enter the initials of each character set: dul
Ek7qSCWijAT8rZrg

The main point of the program is to generate passwords based on seeds. Let's explore various methods to generate a password for your Gmail account:

$ drake -iS
Enter the number of seeds: 2
Enter seed #1: MASTER_PASSWORD
Enter seed #2: GMAIL_ACCOUNT
uYHx}t5;SKmtl{![

Where the first seed is your master password, to be used with each and every password you want to generate and the second seed is your Gmail address. You can also specify the number of seeds directly (drake -iS 2) to skip entering the number of seeds after the command. Note that if you combine options (-iS instead of -i -S) only the last one may accept a value. For example, -Si would not work as -S can accept a value. Anyway, a faster way to do the same thing would be the following (note that the seed is the same as the two above joined together, it's the same thing, since any number of seeds are just joined together):

$ drake -s MASTER_PASSWORDGMAIL_ACCOUNT
uYHx}t5;SKmtl{![

By skipping the -i option the seed is visible in your bash history but if that is not a problem this method is faster. Also note the difference between -S and -s, the second of which was used here. In the previous example we didn't need to enter a -s flag because it's implied with -S (if there is a number of seeds, there must be a seed). If you want to enter the seed in this way, you may need to surround the seed with quotes if it contains characters such as $ (which are interpreted by the shell). A more secure method (nothing visible in the history) would be:

$ drake -is
Enter the seed: MASTER_PASSWORDGMAIL_ACCOUNT
uYHx}t5;SKmtl{![

However, this method requires user input, unlike the previous one, so it can't be included in a separate program (for example, a web app). These three different methods produce the same output because in effect they're equivalent. But as mentioned earlier, some are secure while others are quick or can be used non-interactively.

Now, all the previous methods have ended by printing everything you enter on the screen, which might be a problem. To avoid this, use the -C option:

$ drake -iCs
Enter the seed:

Note that drake -isC would not work since, as explained earlier, if you combine option flags (-iCs vs. -i -C -s) at most one can be a non-boolean option, and it must be specified last (thus -iCs since -s is non-boolean). The only boolean options are -i, -c and -C. In any case, now the password uYHx}t5;SKmtl{![ is on the clipboard, because the same seed as in the previous example was entered even though it is not visible. If you only want to save the password to the clipboard directly, you could also do the following:

$ drake -cs 'MASTER_PASSWORDGMAIL_ACCOUNT'

This method, just like the previous method, saved the password to the clipboard.

You can obfuscate a simple password with the -o flag. For example:

$ drake -io
Enter the password: test
Enter the alignment (left/right): left
test}5S%hUFfui"h

Or without -i:

$ drake -o test,right
ZV8G:vY7-'Obtest

More obfuscation options will be added later.

To gauge the strength of a password the -g flag can be used:

$ drake -ig
Enter the password: 3/~i36GAq=-NfaW9
Entropy (assuming a cardinality of 95): 105.12 bits
Cracking time (worst case scenario): 22006333432588288000 seconds

The worst case scenario is a million parallel cracking attempts at a billion passwords per second. This is a bit too optimistic and shows how strong the passwords are.

If you don't feel like typing all these options you could add an alias to your .bashrc (bash settings file):

alias drake='drake -i'

Or:

alias drake='drake -iS 2'

Depending on what you want the default options to be. Note that it would be wiser to use some other alias than drake (such as cdrake) since you can't disable this without removing the alias.

Although all these similar but different options may seem to make the interface overly complex, the fact that most of them can be used in combination is enough to justify it.