Feature request: Mask repository credentials in --verbose output

[wkl3nk]

Summary

Currently, if command line flag --verbose is given, python-inspector outputs all repositories and their respective credentials, including username and password in plain text.

In order to reduce the risk of an adversary gaining access to the password, please add masking of passwords in the printer that prints the log output.

Current behavior

When running python-inspector with --verbose, the tool prints information about all configured repositories, including:

• Repository URL or name
• Username
• Password in plain text

This means anyone with access to logs (local logs, CI logs, support dumps, etc.) can see the full password.

Requested behaviour

When the printer outputs credentials in --verbose mode, apply the following masking rules to the password:

• If the password has a length of less than 12 characters, output only: ***
• Else (password length ≥ 12), print: the first 3 characters of the password, then ***, then the last 3 characters of the password.
  Example: abc***xyz

The username and other non-secret fields can remain unchanged.

Rationale

This feature would:

• Reduce the risk of leaking passwords to an acceptable level, because the full password is never printed.
• Still keep --verbose useful for support and maintenance: One can still verify whether the password used is the expected one by checking the visible prefix and suffix.

To stress it again:

Masking out the password completely would render the --verbose switch useless for troubleshooting.
The proposed partial masking (abc***xyz) keeps both security and usability in balance.

[mnonnenmacher]

I would be in favor of completely masking password in all cases because exposing parts of them already makes them less secure.

[wkl3nk]

But @mnonnenmacher you know our troubles with support, passwords and token expiry, and then it would be absolutely helpful to be able to compare 6 characters in order to confirm that the password is (probably) correct or outdated. In the support case I am currently working on, the password has a length of 64 characters. I don't think that revealing 6 characters of them should be a problem, but would provide a big benefit for support and bug analysis.

[mnonnenmacher]

Yes, I know the struggles, but security best practices should be followed anyway. I think the situation can already be improved by logging more metadata about used secrets on our side, and maybe also in python-inspector by logging more information about where the password is taken from.