cryptoboned(8)

💖 cryptoboned(8) — bestie, it's the Crypto Bone Daemon 💖

okay so picture this: a daemon that holds your secrets in its brain and refuses to write them down. that's cryptoboned, and she is, lowkey, the main character of the whole Crypto Bone situation. this is section 8 of the manual, so you already know she's a system admin girlie. let's get into it 🦋

---

✨ NAME ✨

cryptoboned — The Crypto Bone Daemon. that's it, that's the name, she's iconic and she knows it 💅

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

/usr/lib/cryptobone/cryptoboned

yeah. that's the whole thing. no flags, no drama, no "actually let me add seventeen arguments". just run her and let her cook 🔥

---

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so the daemon cryptoboned is the one who holds the message keys and all the other secret info for the Crypto Bone control program (cbcontrol) to use. and here's the cute part: the encrypted database itself lives in the Linux file system, sure, but the master key you'd need to decrypt all that secret stuff? that gets read during the boot process and then stored in memory only. not on disk. in memory. periodt.

while the machine is booting, the daemon gets access to an encrypted file system where the master key is chilling for a short time. once the master key has been read, that file system gets unmounted and a second one gets mounted in the same place. from that moment on, the master key is living its best life in the daemon's main memory and is not visible anywhere in the system's file system. and that's the whole point, bestie: it raises the bar for an attacker to compromise the master key, because now they'd have to actually issue commands in a root shell to recover the unmounted, encrypted file system instead of just... having plain read access to a file. like, we made it hard, no cap. 💀

after the boot process has finished, a restart of the daemon is no longer possible. not a bug, a feature, and it's there to further protect the master key while the daemon is running for normal operations. so if you were thinking "lol I'll just restart her", no. you will not. 🙈

while she's running, the daemon talks to the cbcontrol program through a socket that's accessible to root only. and she does a vibe check on every single caller: she checks whether or not the process trying to communicate is /usr/lib/cryptobone/cbcontrol. if the request comes from a different program, she stops all communications. instant block. not sorry. 💅

things like encryption or decryption of messages and attachment files that need AES keys are handled by the program /usr/lib/cryptobone/bin/claes, which receives encryption keys via standard input. so that's the arrangement. 🎀

oh, and the maximum size of the information stored in the encrypted data base is 250000 bytes. that's the ceiling, bestie, don't push it.

---

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• none — literally none. she takes no options. she is unbothered. she is booked and busy. 🧚

---

✨ COMMANDS ✨

the cryptobone daemon responds to the following commands, which can be sent through the socket:

• all-keys — prints a list of all keys that are used to store secret values. a little directory of your secrets, if you will 👑
• get-element key — prints the value of the secret stored under key in the secrets data base. look it up, bestie 🔍
• init — creates the secrets database if it does not already exist. does not overwrite an existing data base, so you can't accidentally nuke yourself. we love a safe girlie 🫶
• remove key — destroys the secret value stored under key in the data base. gone. ghosted. 💀
• replace key new_value — replaces the stored value with a new value. and if the key is not already used, the value is created under the key. so it's giving "update or insert", she's flexible like that ✨
• write key value — creates a new entry in the data base. does not overwrite an existing value stored under the key. if it's already there, she's not touching it. respect the boundaries 🎀

---

✨ FILES ✨

• /usr/lib/cryptobone/cryptoboned
• /usr/lib/cryptobone/database
• /usr/lib/cryptobone/bin/claes
• /usr/lib/systemd/system/cryptoboned.service

these are the locations, memorise them, they will come up again i promise 🌸

---

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

• libcl (3)
• cbcontrol (8)

go read those too, bestie, iykyk 📚

---

✨ AUTHORS ✨

cryptoboned has been written by Ralf Senderek <innovation@senderek.ie>. and the core cryptographic library libcl.so which is used by cryptoboned has been written by Peter Gutmann <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>. legends, both of them, we stan 👑

---

✨ BUGS ✨

Of course there aren't bugs, but if you find any, please sent them to innovation@senderek.ie.

(that's a direct quote and honestly? the confidence. the audacity. the main character energy. we have no choice but to respect it 💅)

---

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🦋✨ this was cryptoboned(8), brought to you by Ralf Senderek (who wrote cryptoboned, and whose name also sits at the bottom of the original page), in manual section 8. stay secretive, stay in memory, and never restart the daemon. mwah 💖🎀🌸