KDE Utils/ksecretsservice

Structure

ksecretsservice is a secrets management infrastructure aiming to replace KDE_Utils/kwallet.

part	purpose	important notes
ksecretsserviced	store the secrets in a secure manner
ksecretsservice	Public API to be used by KDE applications
secretsync	Tool used to synchronize secrets between several devices
kio	Let users browse secrets using the ksecrets:// protocol

Roadmap

• Daemon (ksecretsserviced)
  • ksecrets specific file format storage [DONE]
  • testing and bugfixing [IN PROGRESS]
• KDE API (ksecretsservice)
  • support secret creation and retrieving [DONE]
  • implement signals [TO BE DONE]
• Secrets Sync Tool (ksecretssync)
  • Implement syncing protocol [TO BE DONE]
  • Add IMAP support [TO BE DONE]
  • Add SFTP support [TO BE DONE]
• ksecrets tool
  • Specify commands to be added [TO BE DONE]
  • Implement these commands [TO BE DONE]
• kio (used to display secrets in e.g. Dolphin)
  • Finish it [TO BE DONE]
• KWallet conversion tool (kwl2kss)
  • More testing [TO BE DONE]

Notes

Originally, this project was started as a freedesktop.org specification, that one could find here [[1]]. This specification is for a DBus daemon providing a means for applications to securely store and retrieve secrets information. Under KDE, this is considered an implementation detail and KDE applications are supposed to use the client API described above. However, this implementation detail is important to be known for those users mixing KDE and GNOME, as the freedesktop.org specification is alos implemented by gnome-keyring. These user should make a choice about the actual daemon they want to activate and then stick with it, as no migration tool exists (yet) from ksecretsserviced to gnome-keyring or viceversa.