StatiCrypt uses AES-256 to encrypt your HTML file with your passphrase and return a static page including a password prompt and the javascript decryption logic you can safely upload anywhere (see [what the page looks like](https://robinmoisson.github.io/staticrypt/example/example_encrypted.html)).
This means you can **password protect the content of your _public_ static HTML file, without any back-end** - serving it over Netlify, GitHub pages, etc. (see [how it works](#how-staticrypt-works)).
You can encrypt a file online in your browser (client side) at https://robinmoisson.github.io/staticrypt, or use the CLI to do it in your build process.
Staticrypt is available through npm as a CLI, install with `npm install -g staticrypt` (with or without the `-g` flag). If without the `-g` flag, you can call the command with `npx staticrypt ...`.
> These will create a `.staticrypt.json` file in the current directory, see the FAQ as to why. You can prevent it by setting the `--config` flag to "false".
**Encrypt a file:** Encrypt `test.html` and create a `test_encrypted.html` file (add `-o my_encrypted_file.html` to change the name of the output file):
**Encrypt a file with the passphrase in an environment variable:** set your passphrase in the `STATICRYPT_PASSWORD` environment variable ([`.env` files](https://www.npmjs.com/package/dotenv#usage) are supported):
```bash
# the passphrase is in the STATICRYPT_PASSWORD env variable
**Encrypt all html files in a directory** and replace them with encrypted versions (`{}` will be replaced with each file name by the `find` command - if you wanted to move the encrypted files to a `encrypted/` directory, you could use `-o encrypted/{}`):
StatiCrypt uses the [crypto-js](https://github.com/brix/crypto-js) library to generate a static, password protected page that can be decrypted in-browser. You can then just send or upload the generated page to a place serving static content (github pages, for example) and you're done: the page will prompt users for password, and the javascript will decrypt and load your HTML, all done in browser.
You can report thoughts and issues to the [GitHub project](https://robinmoisson.github.io/staticrypt) but be warned I might be quite slow to respond (though the community might help). If a serious security issue is reported I'll try to fix it quickly.
The protected file has been encrypted with AES-256 (CBC), a very popular encryption algorithm, and you can now upload your file in any public place without anyone being able to read it.
Actual security always depends on a number of factors - because your full encrypted file is accessible in browser, brute-force/dictionary attacks would be trivial to do at a really fast pace: **use a long, unusual passphrase**.
**Important disclaimer:** I am not a cryptographer, and though the concept is simple and I try my best to implement it correctly it is easy to unknowingly weaken cryptography in subtle ways. If you are an at-risk activist profile or have sensitive banking or crypto data to protect, you might want to use something else!
Yes! Just copy `cli/password_template.html`, modify it to suit your style and point to your template file with the `-f path/to/my/file.html` flag. Be careful to not break the encrypting javascript part, the variables replaced by StatiCrypt are between curly brackets: `{salt}`.
Some adblockers used to see the `crypto-js.min.js` served by CDN, think that's a crypto miner and block it. If you don't want to include it and serve from a CDN instead, you can add `--embed false`.
The "Remember me" feature stores the user password hashed and salted in the browser's localStorage, so it needs the salt to be the same each time you encrypt otherwise the user would be logged out when you encrypt the page again. The config file is a way to store the salt in between runs, so you don't have to remember it and pass it manually.
When deciding what salt to use, StatiCrypt will first look for a `--salt` flag, then try to get the salt from the config file, and if it still doesn't find a salt it will generate a random one. It then saves the salt in the config file.
The CLI will add a "Remember me" checkbox on the password prompt by default (`--noremember` to disable). If the user checks it, the (salted + hashed) passphrase will be stored in their browser's localStorage and the page will attempt to auto-decrypt when they come back.
If no value is provided the stored passphrase doesn't expire, you can also give it a value in days for how long should the store value be kept with `-r NUMBER_OF_DAYS`. If the user reconnects to the page after the expiration date the stored value will be cleared.
#### "Logging out"
You can clear StatiCrypt values in localStorage (effectively "logging out") at any time by appending `staticrypt_logout` to the URL query parameters (`mysite.com?staticrypt_logout`).
#### Encrypting multiple pages
This allows encrypting multiple page on a single domain with the same password: if you check "Remember me", you'll have to enter you password once then all the pages on that domain will automatically decrypt their content. Because the hashed value is stored in the browser's localStorage, this will only work if all the pages are on the same domain name.
#### Is the "Remember me" checkbox secure?
In case the value stored in browser becomes compromised an attacker can decrypt the page, but because it's stored salted and hashed this should still protect against password reuse attack if you've used the passphrase on other websites (of course, please use a unique passphrase nonetheless).
- [@AaronCoplan](https://github.com/AaronCoplan) for bringing the CLI to life
- [@epicfaace](https://github.com/epicfaace) & [@thomasmarr](https://github.com/thomasmarr) for sparking the caching of the passphrase in localStorage (allowing the "Remember me" checkbox)
- [@hurrymaplelad](https://github.com/hurrymaplelad) for refactoring a lot of the code and making the project much more pleasant to work with
### Opening PRs and issues
You're free to open PRs if you're ok with having no response for a (possibly very) long time and me possibly ending up getting inspiration from your proposal but merging something different myself (I'll try to credit you though). Apologies in advance for the delay, and thank you!
It's fine to open issues with suggestions and bug reports.
If you find a serious security bug please open an issue, I'll try to fix it relatively quickly.
-`cli/` - The command-line interface published to NPM.
-`example/` - This file is encrypted as part of the build. The encrypted file is committed both to make this library easy to explore and as a review-time sanity check.
-`lib/` - Files shared across www and cli.
-`scripts/` - Build, test, deploy, CI, etc. See `npm run-script`.
-`index.html` - The root of the in-browser encryption site hosted at https://robinmoisson.github.io/staticrypt. Kept in the root of the repo for easy deploys to GitHub Pages.
Here are some other projects and community resources you might find interesting (this is included as an informative section, I haven't personally vetted any of those).
[MaxLaumeister/PageCrypt](https://github.com/MaxLaumeister/PageCrypt) is a project with similar features in a different style (I think it was created before StatiCrypt).
### Based on StatiCrypt
**WebCrypto:** https://github.com/tarpdalton/staticrypt/tree/webcrypto is a fork that uses the WebCrypto browser api to encrypt and decrypt the page, which removes the need for `crypto-js`. There's a PR open towards here which I haven't checked in detail yet. WebCrypto is only available in HTTPS context (which [is annoying people](https://github.com/w3c/webcrypto/issues/28)) so it won't work if you're on HTTP.
**Template to host an encrypted single page website with Github Pages:** [a-nau/password-protected-website-template](https://github.com/a-nau/password-protected-website-template) is a demonstration of how to build a protected page on Github Pages, integrating with Github Actions