$Id: README.sgml.in 6007 2014-02-23 14:52:26Z rafisol $
Copyright © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014 Rafael Ostertag <rafi@guengel.ch>
Table of Contents
YAPET is a text based password manager using the Blowfish encryption algorithm to store passwords and associated information encrypted on disk. Its primary aim is to provide a safe way to store passwords in a file on disk while having a small footprint, and compiling and running under today's most popular Unix Systems.
The password records are protected by a master password which is used to encrypt and decrypt the password records.
YAPET has been tested on following platforms:
If you want to use YAPET under Cygwin, you may want to read the
README.Cygwin file.
YAPET features:
Blowfish encryption with 448 bits key.
Passwords are not kept clear text in memory.
Depends only on two libraries: OpenSSL (http://www.openssl.org/) and curses or ncurses (http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/).
Locks the terminal on inactivity.
Utilities to convert to and from CSV format.
Built-in password generator.
New user interface with experimental support for multi-byte characters.
In addition to csv2yapet, there is now also an utility yapet2csv which converts PET files to CSV files.
On terminals supporting colors, passwords are hidden when viewing password records in read-only mode. Switching to edit mode will display the password clear text. Selection of hidden passwords still possible.
The screen is now also locked when a password record is open for reading or editing.
Password records are opened in read-only mode by default for viewing in order to prevent accidental changes. Pressing Ctrl+e in any text field will switch to read-write mode for editing password records.
The password prompt of the lock screen will now time-out. The time-out can be specified in the configuration file.
The file structure of YAPET files has changed in version 0.6. You are strongly advised to make backup copies of your files before using YAPET 0.6.
A design flaw in YAPET may prevent the exchange of YAPET files between different processor architectures (64/32 bit) due to varying header sizes in YAPET files.
All YAPET versions prior YAPET 0.6 are affected by this issue.
Starting with YAPET 0.6, the header size of YAPET files remains stable across processor architectures, thus exchanging YAPET files is possible unimpeded.
YAPET 0.6 will read and write version 0.5 or earlier files. Reading, deleting, and/or adding records won't update the file structure to version 0.6. However, changing the master password (or setting the same password again, for this matter) using YAPET 0.6 will update the file version to 0.6.
YAPET prior version 0.6 can read and write version 0.6 files, but it might be observed that the date when the master password was last changed is displayed incorrectly. YAPET prior 0.5 will update the file structure to pre-version 0.6 upon master password change. See Table 1, “File Compatibility Matrix of YAPET 0.5 or earlier” for an overview of the compatibility issues in YAPET 0.5 or earlier.
Table 1. File Compatibility Matrix of YAPET 0.5 or earlier
| YAPET running on | File created | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Version 0.5 or earlier | Version 0.6 | |||||||
| Little Endian | Big Endian | Little Endian | Big Endian | |||||
| 32bit | 64bit | 32bit | 64bit | 32bit | 64bit | 32bit | 64bit | |
| Little Endian 32bit[a] | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Little Endian 64bit[a] | no | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Big Endian 32bit [b] | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Big Endian 64bit[b] | no | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
[a] AMD, Intel, etc. [b] PowerPC, SPARC, etc | ||||||||
YAPET 0.6 reads and writes any YAPET file regardless of the YAPET version used to create and the architecture.
Refer to the DESIGN file for further
information on this issue.
YAPET uses a configure script for configuring
the build process. For more information, refer to
the INSTALL file in the source
tarball yapet-1.0.tar.gz.
YAPET is kept simple. You should not find it difficult to use.
See the manual page yapet(1) after installing YAPET for a minimal user guide.
Refer to the DESIGN file which comes along
with the source tarball in order to get an idea of the design of
YAPET.
Although several precautions were taken to avoid having any passwords stored clear text in memory, there were occasions when core files contained the master password. This means that it is possible, though not likely, for a malicious user to get hold of one or more passwords while YAPET is running.