Secret Files

Keeps your files more secure by ensuring saved files are chmoded 0700 by the same user who is running the process. For example, this could be used by a Rails application to store certificates only readable by the www-data process.

The secret files gem includes some fun over-engineering with file locking!

Usage

Add to your Gemfile:

gem 'secret'

Now you should set up your "default" container in an initializer:

Secret.configure_default 'path/to/secret/dir'

Finally, you should now be able to put stuff into the secret directory, or read contents!

secret = Secret.default

# Save the key
secret.some_key.stash "ThisIsSomeKey"

# Get the key
puts secret.some_key.contents

# Manually seek through the file
secret.some_key.stream 'r' do |f|
    f.seek 1, IO::SEEK_CUR
end

# Support for nested directories
file = secret.file "certs/file.crt"
file.stash "Contents of CA File"
puts file.contents

# Also support for shorthand syntax
secret.stash "certs/file.key", "Contents of this key file!"
puts secret.contents "certs/file.key"

Encryption

The secret gem supports basic AES encryption with a random IV. Note that encryption / decryption is somewhat slow and is intended only for small strings and files.

You should implement your own encryption mechanism for anything that is more comprehensive than basic passphrase encryption.

secret = Secret.default
file   = secret.file "my_file.txt"

# Note here that unencrypted content touches the hard drive
file.stash "This is some secret contents"

if file.encrypted?
  puts "Encrypting file contents..."
  file.encrypt! "password"
  puts file.contents

  puts "Changing file passphrase..."
  file.change_encryption_passphrase! "password", "password2"
else
  puts "Decrypted file contents..."
  puts file.decrypted "password2"

  # Will still be an encrypted string
  puts file.contents

  # Decrypt the file
  puts "Decrypting file..."
  file.decrypt!
  puts file.contents
end

# If we immediately wish to stash some encrypted data
file = secret.file "file2.txt"
file.stash_encrypted "This is encrypted", "password"

How Secure is It?

Ths is only somewhat secure and will provide protection against:

• Someone who gains access to your server with non-root access
• Other non-root server processes

However, this will not protect you against:

• People with root access
• Arbitrary code execution attacks by the owner (i.e. an eval() gone wrong)

Other Features

This gem also includes locking support, meaning that it will be resillient against multiple processes writing to a file. This will not lock multiple threads from the same process.