lpass-add

This is an (unofficial) script which wraps the LastPass CLI lpass to easily add SSH private keys to your ssh-agent keychain. In short, it acts as a go-between for lpass and ssh-add by using ephemeral private key files.

This script is intended as a replacement to storing SSH keys in files on your local filesystem, and it's better because:

• Private keys can be synced across multiple PCs (although SSH best practice is to avoid using the same private key on too many hosts).
• Private keys are not stored on your local filesystem. They exist in LastPass, or in ssh-agent memory. Note that an ephemeral key file is created, but it is immediately deleted by the script.
• Private keys can be shared (if absolutely necessary) using LastPass secure sharing.

I built this tool for cases where you have private keys that are moderately important but for historical reasons are not password protected. Note that you should usually password-protect your private keys, in which case you can store the passwords in LastPass instead of the whole key itself. However, sometimes that's just not possible.

Using LastPass adds quite a bit of overhead to a local-filesystem-based key management process. If you aren't familiar with LastPass or the lpass tool, check that out first -- there's a bit of a learning curve.

Q: Why use LastPass instead of <X>?

A: Check out the "Why LastPass?" section of my announcement blog post.

Installation

It's just a Bash script. You can install it however you want, but something like this seems pretty popular:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/luketurner/lpass-add/master/bin/lpass-add -o /usr/local/bin/lpass-add && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/lpass-add

However, lpass-add depends on the LastPass CLI tool lpass, which must also be installed on your machine. See the lpass docs for more information about that. (Spoiler for OS X users: brew update && brew install lastpass-cli --with-pinentry)

It also depends on ssh-agent. You should be able to run the ssh-add command on your machine -- if not, you may need to reinstall OpenSSH, or fix whatever you're using. If you don't know how to use SSH, this is not the README for you.

Usage

The lpass-add script is written to have the same basic usage as ssh-add, which it calls directly. The script itself is ridiculously short. I recommend reading it, so you see what's going on under the hood. Trust me, there's not a lot in there.

Say you have a LastPass entry called my-ssh-key with a SSH private key pasted into the Notes field. Then, to load that SSH key into ssh-agent, you just need to do:

$ lpass-add my-ssh-key

Of course, you must be logged in to lpass for this to work.

Managing private keys with lpass

The lpass-add script does not provide an easy way to add and edit private keys, so users must be familiar with lpass and how it's used to create, edit, and view LastPass credentials. Remember that the SSH private key has to be in the Notes field for lpass-add to work with the credential.

Consider this example, which adds a new private key to LastPass using lpass and then imports it to the local ssh-agent:

# Create a new private key in LastPass
$ cat | lpass edit --notes my-private-key << EOF
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MYPRIVATEKEYGOESHEREMYPRIVATEKEYGOESHERE
MYPRIVATEKEYGOESHEREMYPRIVATEKEYGOESHERE
MYPRIVATEKEYGOESHEREMYPRIVATEKEYGOESHERE
MYPRIVATEKEYGOESHEREMYPRIVATEKEYGOESHERE
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
EOF

# Load the key into ssh-agent
$ lpass-add my-private-key

# Now, we can use it to connect to servers
$ ssh my-user@example.com

Organizing Keys In LastPass

I have a practice of putting all my SSH private keys inside an SSH folder in my LastPass vault. Within that folder, I create a subfolder for every project/company/whatever that I have SSH keys for. This way, LastPass not only secures my keys, but also helps me organize them similar to a filesystem.

For example, if I make a new private key for testing deployments at work, I might do:

$ lpass edit --notes SSH/mycompany/test/deployment

Also, I typically store the public keys in LastPass as well, by appending -pubkey to the name of the private key. The lpass-add script does not interact with these credentials, I just find them handy in case you want to get the public key later.

For example, I might put a public key at:

$ lpass edit --notes SSH/mycompany/test/deployment-pubkey

I recommend you find an organizational system that works well for you. lpass-add doesn't care about anything except the Notes field in the entry, so there is a lot of flexibility for integrating it into any LastPass power-user setup.

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Copyright (c) 2016 Luke Turner

Released under MIT License (SPDX:MIT)