Donjon

Donjon is a secure, multi-user store for key-value pairs.

Skip to: Purpose | Concepts | Setting up | Usage

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Purpose

We built Donjon to share credentials in a (small) devops team, for services where single user accounts don't make sense, e.g.:

root passwords for databases and servers
root credentials for hosting accounts
accounts for web services that don't do multi-user/multi-admin
Two-factor tokens for single-user web services.

Donjon uses standards for encryption: 2048-bit asymmetric RSA encryption used to prime symmetric 256-bit AES CBC encryption with random padding. In other words, while the NSA will probably be able to read your data should it get its paws on it, it's unlikely Joe Hacker will.

Online tools exist that serve the same purpose as Donjon, but simply put: they're generally closed source and host the data somewhere we don't control. We think the inconvenience of not having a cute toolbar icon for passwords is trumped by better security.

Concepts

A vault is a directory managed by Donjon. It contains encrypted key-value pairs, and public keys for all allowed users. Each key-value pair lives in its own directory. The name of the directory is an obfuscated (hashed) version of the key, but it's not encrypted. The directory contains one file per user, each containing the key-value pair encrypted with their public key.

Syncing the vault between users is left as an exercice to users or integrators :) One option is to use a shared drive (e.g. using a cloud server and SSHFS). We prefer to sync the vault directory using Bittorrent Sync rather than leave a copy of it with third parties. Another option is to use Git as a distribution mechanism.

Installation

The setup is slightly different different for new vaults (first subsection below) and connecting to an existing vault (second subsection).

This section assumes the vault is synced between users using Bittorrent Sync.

Creating a new vault

Install Donjon:

$ gem install donjon

Run the Donjon configuration:

$ dj init

Note that while you can re-use an existing private key for Donjon, it must be encrypted and be a 2048-bit RSA key.

Add, then read a first key-value pair to confirm encryption is working:

$ dj config:set TEST=foobar
$ dj config:get TEST
TEST: foobar

Download, install, and run Bittorrent Sync.

Add the vault directory you configured during dj init to be synced by Bittorrent Sync.

Connecting to an existing vault

Create an (empty) directory where you want the vault to be synced. Tyhis can typically be ~/.donjon.

Download and install Bittorrent Sync.

Ask a peer already using the vault you're interested in to provide you a "one time secret" for the shared vault directory. Add this to Bittorrent Sync, and wait for syncing to complete. Note that one-time keys can only be used by one user!

Install Donjon:

$ gem install donjon

Configure Donjon; when prompted for a vault path, enter the path to the relevant synced directory:

$ dj init

At this point your public key has been added to the vault, but you can't access any data as it hasn't been encrypted for you. Obtain your public key:

$ dj user:key

and send it over a reasonably secure medium to your peer. They will then run

$ dj user:add <your-username>

to encrypt all key-value pairs for your user.

Test that you can read a particular key, and you're all set!

Usage

Once you've set up a vault (you can use vault:init to connect to an existing vault, e.g. on Dropbox).

Commands:
  dj config:get KEY...         # Decrypts the value for KEY from the vault
  dj config:mget [REGEXP]      # Decrypts multiple keys (all readable by default)
  dj config:set KEY=VALUE ...  # Encrypts KEY and VALUE in the vault
  dj help [COMMAND]            # Describe available commands or one specific command
  dj init                      # Creates a new vault, or connects to an existing vault.
  dj user:add NAME [PATH]      # Adds user and their public key to the vault. Reads from standard input if no path is given.
  dj user:key                  # Prints your public key

Contributing

Fork it ( http://github.com/mezis/donjon/fork )
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request