Isn't it weird that we put credentials in the environment?

sebastiancarlos@lemmy.sdf.org to Linux@lemmy.ml – 71 points –

Almost every program that we run has access to the environment, so nothing stops them from curling our credentials to some nefarious server.

Why don't we put credentials in files and then pass them to the programs that need them? Maybe coupled with some mechanism that prevents executables from reading any random file except those approved.

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But how do you authenticate to your secret manager? How do you prevent evil scripts from also doing this?

I type my password, or on the work MacBook, TouchID. I'd imagine yubikeys would do too.