Best way to hide password in bash script? Post: 302412087

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Best way to hide password in bash script? Post 302412087 by dukevn on Sunday 11th of April 2010 04:27:10 PM

04-11-2010

Registered User

Best way to hide password in bash script?

Dear folks,

The title of my thread says mostly all of what I want to do. Basically I want to auto-ssh to a remote host, and run a program on it (VLC is just an example). I wrote a script which calls xterm and then runs expect on it. The code is as follow

Code:

#!/bin/bash

export PASS="xxxxxxx"
xterm -T VLC -e "(expect -c \"
set timeout -1
spawn ssh -X user@192.168.1.2 \\\"vlc\\\"
match_max 100000
expect \\\"*?assword:*\\\"
send -- \\\"$PASS\\r\\\"
send -- \\\"\\r\\\"
interact\") &> /dev/null"

Obviously, one can use ps to reveal what is happening

Code:

$ ps -elf | grep vlc
0 S user 11371 11370  0  80   0 -  2599 select 16:14 pts/1    00:00:00 xterm -T VLC -e (expect -c "?set timeout -1?spawn ssh -X user@192.168.1.2 \"vlc\"?match_max 100000?expect \"*?assword:*\"?send -- \"xxxxxxx\r\"?send -- \"\r\"?interact") &> /dev/null
0 S user 11372 11371  0  80   0 -  1111 wait   16:14 pts/2    00:00:00 bash -c (expect -c "?set timeout -1?spawn ssh -X user@192.168.1.2 \"vlc\"?match_max 100000?expect \"*?assword:*\"?send -- \"xxxxxxx\r\"?send -- \"\r\"?interact") &> /dev/null
0 S user 11373 11372  0  80   0 -  2982 futex_ 16:14 pts/2    00:00:00 expect -c ?set timeout -1?spawn ssh -X user@192.168.1.2 "vlc"?match_max 100000?expect "*?assword:*"?send -- "xxxxxxx\r"?send -- "\r"?interact
0 S user 11375 11373  0  80   0 -  1363 select 16:14 pts/3    00:00:00 ssh -X user@192.168.1.2 vlc
0 S user 11398 11381  0  80   0 -   834 pipe_w 16:14 pts/4    00:00:00 grep vlc

and then one can easily see the password I put in the code.

The primary reason for the code is to create a ready-to-run program for non-tech people (who have no idea about unix, about ssh, and who are not given ssh account as well), and of course I do not want them to know my password. Of course, they might be so novice that they might not know that ps command, but I just want to have some security for myself.

Any idea or advice will be greatly appreciated,

PS: the host is linux (red hat), and clients are Mac OS X (so expect and ssh can be used)

D.

Last edited by dukevn; 04-11-2010 at 05:32 PM.. Reason: Added PS

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LEARN ABOUT POSIX

ssh-argv0

SSH-ARGV0(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 					      SSH-ARGV0(1)

NAME

     ssh-argv0 -- replaces the old ssh command-name as hostname handling

SYNOPSIS

     hostname | user@hostname [-l login_name] [command]

     hostname | user@hostname [-afgknqstvxACNTX1246] [-b bind_address] [-c cipher_spec] [-e escape_char] [-i identity_file] [-l login_name]
     [-m mac_spec] [-o option] [-p port] [-F configfile] [-L port:host:hostport] [-R port:host:hostport] [-D port] [command]

DESCRIPTION

     ssh-argv0 replaces the old ssh command-name as hostname handling.	If you link to this script with a hostname then executing the link is
     equivalent to having executed ssh with that hostname as an argument.  All other arguments are passed to ssh and will be processed normally.

OPTIONS

     See ssh(1).

FILES

     See ssh(1).

AUTHORS

     OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free ssh 1.2.12 release by Tatu Ylonen.  Aaron Campbell, Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos,
     Theo de Raadt and Dug Song removed many bugs, re-added newer features and created OpenSSH.  Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH
     protocol versions 1.5 and 2.0.  Jonathan Amery wrote this ssh-argv0 script and the associated documentation.

SEE ALSO

     ssh(1)

Debian Project							 September 7, 2001						    Debian Project

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