this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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How do you handle secrets in home automation? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Say you have a script or something that gets run in cron/task scheduler and it needs a password.. say to ssh to a raspberry pi elsewhere in your house.

How do you save that password in a way that automation can access it?

Some ideas:

  • Plaintext file. Not a fan because its sitting unencrypted on the box somewhere.
  • Environment variable. Not a fan because its still unencrypted somewhere to someone on the box (albeit likely the same user or an admin).
  • A secrets manager. If I use something locally like hashicorp vault or infisical, I can get to a point where a cli/api call gets the password. Though in this case I still need a vault password/secret to get my password. So I fall back to needing one of the above to get this to work.

If the secrets manager is easily available, the secret to get into the secrets manager is available as well leading to a feeling of security by obscurity.

If someone breaks into my system via SSH/etc. then they can get the passwords either way.

.. How do people normally do this? I'm not sure I actually get anything out of a secrets manager if its local and I have the disk itself encrypted before login.

What actually makes sense at a personal/home scale?

(Edit: I know using SSH key probably is better for getting to the raspberry pi, but still the question is the same idea).

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I generate a unique key pair (or token) for each service that I want to access from the host machine. I see no issue with storing that dedicated private key locally in plaintext (obviously in a folder where only the required user can read it and I except it from backup and versioning). I use one dedicated user per externally accessible service.

Should the machine itself become compromised this would indicate that my personal master key and master password have been compromised or someone gained physical access. That would require me to restart from a blank page anyways.