‘Pass’ password manager – does it require public key

gpgpassword

The 'pass' password manager uses gpg keys.

http://www.passwordstore.org/

However, gpg itself can be used for symmetric encryption of files.
Does pass only work using public/private keys, or is it possible to use with symmetric encryption?

Best Answer

The pass password manager requires a public key for encrypting its files (where the managed passwords are stored) - and it requires a private key to decrypt its files.

It isn't possible to configure pass to use gpg's 'pure' symmetric file encryption (cf. the -c or --symmetric GPG options).

This is due to the design of pass - using GPG's public key cryptography for file encryption/decryption allows for flexibility, e.g. for configuring multiple keys - say - such that a group of users has access to the managed passwords.

Also note that GPG uses a hybrid scheme when encrypting a file for one or many recipients (i.e. using one or many public keys): it randomly generates a session key for the symmetric encryption of the file and then just uses the public key/keys to encrypt the session key.

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