Provided by: tomb_2.12+dfsg-2_amd64 
NAME
Tomb - the Crypto Undertaker
SYNOPSIS
tomb [options] command [arguments]
DESCRIPTION
Tomb is an application to manage the creation and access of encrypted storage files: it can be operated
from commandline and it can integrate with a user's graphical desktop.
Tomb generates encrypted storage files to be opened and closed using their associated keys, which are
also protected with a password chosen by the user. To create, open and close tombs a user will need super
user rights to execute the tomb commandline utility.
A tomb is like a locked folder that can be safely transported and hidden in a filesystem; it encourages
users to keep their keys separate from tombs, for instance keeping a tomb file on your computer harddisk
and its key file on a USB stick.
COMMANDS
dig Generates a file that can be used as a tomb and will occupy as much space as its desired initial
size, the unlocked .tomb file can then be locked using a key. It takes a mandatory -s option which
is the size in megabytes (MiB). Tombs are digged using random data gathered from a non-blocking
source (/dev/urandom). For very large tombs this may take up too much time and entropy, then it is
possible to use fallocate(1) being aware it does not pre-fill with random data, decreasing the
tomb's security.
forge Creates a new key and prompts the user for a password to protect its usage using symmetric
encryption. This operation uses random data from a non-blocking source (/dev/urandom) and it may
take long only in some cases; to switch using a blocking source the --use-random flag can be used.
The -g option switches on the use of a GPG key instead of a password (asymmetric encryption), then
the -r option indicates the recipient key; more recipient GPG ids can be indicated (comma
separated). The default cipher to protect the key is AES256, a custom one can be specified using
the -o option, for a list of supported ciphers use -v. For additional protection against
dictionary attacks on keys, the --kdf option can be used when forging a key. Two KDF are currently
supported: argon2 and pbkdf2. pbkdf2 is available from extras/kdf and needs to be compiled and
installed on the system. argon2 is generally available from distribution repositories.
lock Initializes and locks an empty tomb (made with dig) using a key (made with forge), making it ready
for usage. After this operation, the tomb can only be opened in possession of the key and knowing
its password. As in any other command requiring a key, the option -k should be used to specify a
key file; in case of encryption to GPG recipients the -g flag should be used followed by -r and
the recipient's secret GPG key id. The -o option can be used to specify the cipher specification:
default is "aes-xts-plain64", old versions of Tomb used "aes-cbc-essiv:sha256". If you are
looking for something exotic, also try "serpent-xts-plain64". More options may be found in
cryptsetup(8) and Linux documentation. The --filesystem option can be used to specify an
alternative filesystem used to format the tomb, in place of the default "ext4". This operation
requires root privileges to loopback mount, format the tomb (using LUKS and mkfs), then set the
key in its first LUKS slot.
Supported filesystems for --filesystem:
ext3 using operating system defaults
ext4 using operating system defaults
btrfs for tombs >= 47MB using operating system defaults
btrfsmixedmode for tombs >=18MB btrfs mixed mode (see mkfs.btrfs(8))
ext3maxinodes ext3 with a maximum of inodes (for many small files)
ext4maxinodes ext4 with a maximum of inodes (for many small files)
open Opens an existing tomb file (first argument) using a key (-k) which can also be hidden inside a
jpeg image (see bury/exhume) or a long text file (seecloak/uncloak). If a second argument is given
it will indicate the mountpoint where the tomb should be made accessible, else the tomb is mounted
in a directory inside /media (if not available it uses /run/media/$USER). The option -o can be
used to pass mount(8) options (default: rw,noatime,nodev). The -g option is needed when using GPG
encryption to recipients.
list List all the tombs found open, including information about the time they were opened and the hooks
that they mounted. If the first argument is present, then shows only the tomb named that way or
returns an error if it's not found. If the option --get-mountpoint is used then print a simple
list of currently open tomb mountpoint paths.
ps List all the processes found running inside the tombs that are open, printing out their PIDs and
owners. This is useful to have an overview of programs that are keeping the tombs busy and would
eventually be killed by the slam command. The lsof(8) utility is used internally to enumerate
processes running in one or all tombs.
index Creates or updates the search indexes of all tombs currently open: enables use of the search
command using simple word patterns on file names. Indexes are created using plocate's updatedb(8)
and recoll(1) if they are found on the system. Indexes allow one to search very fast for filenames
and contents inside a tomb, they are stored inside it and are not accessible if the Tomb is
closed. To avoid indexing a specific tomb simply touch a .noindex file in it. Useful tools to
have: poppler-utils, aspell, xdg-utils, plocate.
search Takes any string as argument and searches for them through all tombs currently open and previously
indexed using the index command. The search matches filenames if plocate is installed and then
also file contents if recoll is installed, all results are listed on the console. One can also
run recoll's GUI using recoll -c /media/tomb
close Closes a currently open tomb. If more tombs are open, the first argument should be used to
specify the name of the tomb to be closed, or all to close all currently open tombs. This command
fails if the tomb is in use by running processes (to force close, see slam below).
slam Closes a tomb like the command close does, but it doesn't fail even if the tomb is in use by other
application processes: it looks for and closes each of them (in order: TERM, HUP, KILL). This
command may provoke unsaved data loss, but assists users to face surprise situations. It requires
lsof else it falls back to close.
passwd Changes the password protecting a key file specified using -k. With keys encrypted for GPG
recipients use -g followed by -r to indicate the new recipient key, or a comma separated list. The
user will need to know the key's current password, or possess at least one of the current
recipients GPG secret keys, because the key contents will be decoded and reencoded using the new
passwords or keys. If the key file is broken (missing headers) this function also attempts its
recovery.
setkey Changes the key file that locks a tomb, substituting the old one with a new one. Both the old and
the new key files are needed for this operation and their passwords or GPG recipient(s) secret
keys must be available. The new key must be specified using the -k option, the first argument
should be the old key and the second and last argument the tomb file. Use the -g option to unlock
the tomb with a GPG key, the -r to indicate the recipient or a comma separated list for more than
one recipient.
resize Increase the size of a tomb file to the amount specified by the -s option, which is the new size
in megabytes (MiB). Full access to the tomb using a key (-k) and its password is required. Tombs
can only grow and can never be made smaller. This command makes use of the cryptsetup(8) resize
feature and the resize2fs command: its much more practical than creating a new tomb and moving
everything into it. There is no data-loss if a failure occurs during resize: the command can be
re-launched and the resize operation will complete.
engrave
This command transforms a tomb key into an image that can be printed on paper and physically
stored as backup, i.e. hidden in a book. It Renders a QRCode of the tomb key, still protected by
its password: a PNG image (extension .qr.png) will be created in the current directory and can be
later printed (fits an A4 or Letter format). To recover an engraved key one can use any QRCode
reader on a smartphone: save it into a file and then use that file as a key (-k).
bury Hides a tomb key (-k) inside a jpeg image (first argument) using steganography: the image will
change in a way that cannot be noticed by human eye and hardly detected by data analysis. This
option is useful to backup tomb keys in unsuspected places; it depends from the availability of
steghide. Use the -g flag and -r option followed by recipient id to use GPG asymmetric encryption.
exhume This command recovers from jpeg images the keys that were previously hidden into them using bury.
Exhume requires a key filename (-k) and a jpeg image file (first argument) known to be containing
a key. If the right key password is given, the key will be exhumed. If the password is not known,
it is very hard to verify if a key is buried in any image or not.
cloak Cloaks a tomb key (-k) disguising it as text using a cipher file (first argument) writing the
result to stdout or optionally an output file (second argument). See
/usr/share/doc/tomb/examples/cloak-ciphers for potential cipher files. However, it is recommended
to create and use one's own ciphers. This option is useful to backup tomb keys in unsuspected
places.
uncloak
Recovers a tomb key from a cloaked text file. Uncloak requires a text file (first argument), a
cipher file (second argument) and optionally an output file (third argument). If the first two
parameters are correct then the output will be a valid tomb key file restored from cloak.
OPTIONS
-k <keyfile>
For all operations requiring a key, this option specifies the location of the key file to use.
Arguments can also be jpeg image files where keys have been hidden using the bury or cloak
commands, or text files retrieved from engraved QR codes. If the keyfile argument is "-" (dash),
Tomb will read the key from stdin (blocking).
-n Skip processing of exec-hooks and bind-hooks if found inside the tomb. See the HOOKS section in
this manual for more information.
-p When opening a tomb, preserves the ownership of all files and directories contained in it.
Normally the open command changes the ownership of a tomb's contents to the UID and GID of the
user who has successfully opened it: it is a usability feature in case a tomb is used by a single
user across different systems. This flag deactivates this behaviour.
-o Manually specify mount options to be used when opening a tomb instead of the default
rw,noatime,nodev, i.e. to mount a tomb read-only (ro) to prevent any modification of its data. Can
also be used to change the symmetric encryption algorithm for keys during forge operations
(default AES256) or the LUKS encryption method during lock operations (default aes-xts-plain64).
-f Force flag, currently used to override swap checks, might be overriding more wimpy behaviours in
future, but make sure you know what you are doing if you force an operation.
-s <MBytes>
When digging or resizing a tomb, this option must be used to specify the size of the new file to
be created. Units are megabytes (MiB).
-g Tell tomb to use an asymmetric GnuPG key encryption instead of a symmetric passphrase to protect a
tomb key. This option can be followed by -r when the command needs to specify recipient(s).
-r <gpg_id>[,<gpg_id2>]
Provide a new set of recipient(s) to encrypt a tomb key. gpg_ids can be one or more GPG key ID,
comma separated. All GPG keys must be trusted keys in GPG.
--kdf [argon2 | pbkdf2]
Enable the KDF feature against dictionary attacks when creating a key. The required argument
currently allows to choose between argon2 or pbkdf2. argon2 is using a mix of RAM capacity,
number of threads and iterations to achieve a time cost. pbkdf2 is only about calculation speed
to achieve a time cost. Due to a low memory footprint and no restrictions regarding threads, this
time cost can be somewhat negated due to parallelization. Especially on GPUs with their high
number of cores. argon2 requires the respective binary by P-H-C to be installed, as packaged by
most distros. pbkdf2 is available from the tomb sources and is a custom implementation of the
algorithm. Default is pbkdf2.
--kdfiter <itertime>
Available for argon2 and pbkdf2. In general this controls how often the algorithm will be run. In
case of pbkdf2 the argument will be interpret as an interval in seconds. The actual number of
iterations to achieve this delay will be calculated with tomb-kdb-pbkdf2-getiter, which needs to
available (normally installed alongside tomb's pbkdf2 tools). Reason being that the actual time
to wait depends on the CPU speed. OWASP recommendations from 2023 suggest a minimal iteration
count of 600000 for pbkdf2, which should be achieved with the current default value. Default is 3
(based on the argon2 default).
--kdfmem <memory>
In case of argon2 KDF algorithm, this value specifies the size of RAM used: it consists of a
number which is the elevated power of two in kilobytes. Default is 18 which is 250 MiB (2^18 =
262,144 kilobytes).
--kdfpar <# of threads>
In case of argon2 KDF algorithm, this value specifies the number of threads that should be used.
This helps to remedy the effects of an increased time cost for your system whereas setups of ASICs
or GPUs don't profit. Only increase if memory or iteration got increased that much, that key
decryption takes massively longer on regular systems. Default is 1 thread (based on the argon2
default).
--sudo <executable>
Select a different tool than sudo for privilege escalation. Alternatives supported so far are:
pkexec, doas, sup, sud. For any alternative to work the executable must be included in the current
PATH.
-h Display a help text and quit.
-v Display version and quit.
-q Run more quietly
-D Print more information while running, for debugging purposes
DEV MODE
--no-color
Suppress colors in console output (needed for string parsing by wrappers).
--unsafe
Enable using dev-mode arguments, i.e. to pass passwords from commandline options. This is mostly
used needed for execution by wrappers and testing suite.
--use-random
Use a blocking random source. Tomb uses by default /dev/urandom since the non-blocking source of
Linux kernel doesn't degrades the quality of random.
--tomb-pwd <string>
Use string as password when needed on tomb.
--tomb-old-pwd <string>
Use string as old password when needed in tomb commands requiring multiple keys, like passwd or
setkey.
-U Switch to this user ID when dropping privileges.
-G Switch to this group ID when dropping privileges.
-T Switch to this TTY terminal when dropping privileges.
HOOKS
Hooks are special files that can be placed inside the tomb and trigger actions when it is opened and
closed; there are two kinds of such files: bind-hooks and exec-hooks can be placed in the base root of
the tomb.
bind-hooks
This hook file consists of a simple text file named bind-hooks containing a two column list of
paths to files or directories inside the tomb. The files and directories will be made directly
accessible by the tomb open command inside the current user's home directory. Tomb uses internally
the "mount -o bind" command to bind locations inside the tomb to locations found in $HOME. In the
first column are indicated paths relative to the tomb and in the second column are indicated paths
relative to $HOME contents, for example:
mail mail
.gnupg .gnupg
.fmrc .fetchmailrc
.mozilla .mozilla
exec-hooks
This hook file gets executed as user by tomb with the first argument determining the step of
execution (open or close) and the second being the full path to the mountpoint. The exec-hooks
file should be executable (ELF or shell script) and present inside the Tomb. Tomb executes this
hook as user and adds the name, loopback device and dev-mapper device paths as additional
arguments for the close command.
PRIVILEGE ESCALATION
The tomb commandline tool needs to acquire super user rights to execute most of its operations: so it
uses sudo(8) or other configured tools, while pinentry(1) is adopted to collect passwords from the user.
Tomb executes as super user only when required.
To be made available on multi user systems, the superuser execution of the tomb script can be authorized
for users without jeopardizing the whole system's security: just add such a line to /etc/sudoers:
username ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/tomb
To avoid that tomb execution is logged by syslog also add:
Cmnd_Alias TOMB = /usr/local/bin/tomb
Defaults!TOMB !syslog
PASSWORD INPUT
Password input is handled by the pinentry program: it can be text based or graphical and is usually
configured with a symlink. When using Tomb in a graphical environment (X11 or Wayland) it is better to
use either pinentry-gtk2 (deprecated), pinentry-gnome or pinentry-qt because it helps preventing
keylogging by other clients. When using it from a remote ssh connection it might be necessary to force
use of pinentry-tty for instance by unsetting the DISPLAY (X11) or WAYLAND_DISPLAY (Wayland) environment
var.
SWAP
On execution of certain commands Tomb will complain about swap memory on disk when present and abort if
your system has swap activated. You can disable this behaviour using the --force. Before doing that,
however, you may be interested in knowing the risks of doing so:
• During such operations a lack of available memory could cause the swap to write your secret key on
the disk.
• Even while using an opened tomb, another application could occupy too much memory so that the swap
needs to be used, this way it is possible that some contents of files contained into the tomb are
physically written on your disk, not encrypted.
If you don't need swap, execute swapoff -a. If you really need it, you could make an encrypted swap
partition. Tomb doesn't detect if your swap is encrypted, and will complain anyway.
DENIABILITY
The possibility to have an encrypted volume which is invisible and cannot be detected is called
"deniability". The cryptographic layer of the device mapper in Linux (dm-crypt) does not implement
deniability. Tomb is just a wrapper on top of that and it doesn't add cryptographic deniability. However
a certain way of using tomb can facilitate a weak sort of deniability outside of the scenario of seized
devices and forensic analysis of files and blocks on disc.
For instance to eliminate any trace of tomb usage from the shell history ZSh users can activate the
"HISTIGNORESPACE" feature and prefix all invocations of tomb with a blank space, including two lines in
".zshrc":
export HISTIGNORESPACE=1
alias tomb=' tomb'
SHARE A TOMB
A tomb key can be encrypted with more than one recipient. Therefore, a tomb can be shared between
different users. The recipients are given using the -r (or/and -R) option and if multiple each GPG key ID
must be separated by a comma (,). Sharing a tomb is a very sensitive action and the user needs to trust
that all the GPG public keys used are kept safe. If one of them is stolen or lost, it will be always
possible to use it to access the tomb key unless all its copies are destroyed. The -r option can be used
in the tomb commands: open, forge setkey, passwd, bury, exhume and resize.
EXAMPLES
• Create a 128MB large "secret" tomb and its keys, then open it:
tomb dig -s 128 secret.tomb
tomb forge secret.tomb.key
tomb lock secret.tomb -k secret.tomb.key
tomb open secret.tomb -k secret.tomb.key
• Open a Tomb using the key from a remote SSH shell, without saving any local copy of it:
ssh user@my.shell.net 'cat .secrets/tomb.key' | tomb open secret.tomb -k -
• Open a Tomb on a remote server passing the unencrypted local key on stdin via SSH, without saving
any remote copy of it:
gpg -d .secrets/tomb.key | ssh server tomb open secret.tomb -k cleartext --unsafe
• Create a bind hook that places your GnuPG folder inside the tomb, but makes it reachable from the
standard $HOME/.gnupg location every time the tomb will be opened:
tomb open GPG.tomb -k GPG.tomb.key
echo ".gnupg .gnupg" > /media/GPG.tomb/bind-hooks
mv ~/.gnupg /media/GPG.tomb/.gnupg && mkdir ~/.gnupg
tomb close GPG && tomb open GPG.tomb -k GPG.tomb.key
• Script a tomb to launch the Firefox browser every time is opened, keeping all its profile data
inside it:
tomb open FOX.tomb -k FOX.tomb.key
cat <<EOF > /media/FOX.tomb/exec-hooks
#!/bin/sh
if [ "$1" = "open" ]; then
firefox -no-remote -profile "$2"/firefox-pro &
fi
EOF
chmod +x /media/FOX.tomb/exec-hooks
mkdir /media/FOX.tomb/firefox-pro
• Script a tomb to archive Pictures using Shotwell, launching it on open:
tomb open Pictures.tomb -k Pictures.tomb.key
cat <<EOF > /media/Pictures.tomb/bind-hooks
Pictures Pictures
EOF
cat <<EOF > /media/Pictures.tomb/exec-hooks
#!/bin/sh
if [ "$1" = "open" ]; then
which shotwell > /dev/null
if [ "$?" = "0" ]; then
shotwell -d "$2"/Pictures/.shotwell &
fi
fi
EOF
chmod +x /media/Pictures.tomb/exec-hooks
BUGS
Please report bugs on the Github issue tracker at https://github.com/dyne/Tomb/issues
One can also try to get in touch with developers via the #dyne chat channel on https://irc.dyne.org.
COPYING
This manual is Copyright (c) 2011-2021 by Denis Roio <jaromil@dyne.org>
This manual includes contributions by Boyska and Hellekin O. Wolf.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this manual under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual page provided
the above copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
AVAILABILITY
The most recent version of Tomb sourcecode and up to date documentation is available for download from
its website on https://tomb.dyne.org.
SEE ALSO
cryptsetup(8)
pinentry(1)
gpg-agent(1)
GnuPG website: https://www.gnupg.org
DM-Crypt website: https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/DMCrypt
LUKS website: https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/home
tomb Jun 25, 2023 tomb(1)