Re: The enduring popularity of git-credential-store

From: Michal Suchánek <msuchanek@suse.de>
Date: Nov 8, 2022, 12:00 UTC
Message-ID: <20221108120024.GN28810@kitsune.suse.cz>
In-Reply-To: <CAGJzqskRYN49SeS8kSEN5-vbB_Jt1QvAV9QhS6zNuKh0u8wxPQ@mail.gmail.com>

Hello,

On Tue, Nov 08, 2022 at 10:50:33AM +0000, M Hickford wrote:

Show 26 quoted lines

> Among StackOverflow users [1], git-credential-store appears several
> times more popular than any other credential helper. Does this make
> anyone else uneasy? The docs warn that git-credential-store "stores
> your passwords unencrypted on disk" [2]. Are users sacrificing
> security for convenience?
> 
> Firstly, how grave is storing credentials in plaintext? Software
> development guidelines such as CWE discourage storing credentials in
> plaintext [3]. Password managers in desktop environments, mobile
> operating systems and web browsers typically encrypt passwords on disk
> and guard them behind a master password.
> 
> Secondly, the docs recommend git-credential-cache [2] which ships with
> Git and is equally easy to configure. So why isn't it more popular? My
> hypothesis: while caching works great for passwords typed from memory,
> the combination of caching with personal access tokens has poor
> usability. The unmemorised token is lost when the cache expires, so
> the user has to generate a new token every session. I suspect GitHub's
> 2021 decision to stop accepting passwords [4] may have inadvertently
> pushed users from 'cache' to 'store'.
> 
> Thirdly, why doesn't everyone use SSH keys? Unlike HTTP remotes,
> upfront set-up is necessary to clone a public repo. For users
> unfamiliar with SSH, this set-up may be intimidating. Introducing
> users new to Git to SSH at the same time is a significant cognitive
> load.

I think that basically there is very small user base that could make use of the provided authentication options in a more secure manner.

The novice users use the simplest option. Using any king of passsword manager with git is difficult to set up and platform-specific.

The advanced users need automation which in the end means storing the access credentials in plaitext in one way or another.

If github provides access tokens that can be assigned per-application, managed, and individually revoked this is probably as good as it gets. How well the users make use of this feature depends on their security awareness and requirements.

Thanks

Michal