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I work at smallstep and figured I'd add a bit more context. `step` implements a bunch of "zero trust" primitives: authenticated encryption (X.509, TLS), single
by mmalone 8y ago
I work at smallstep and figured I'd add a bit more context. `step` implements a bunch of "zero trust" primitives: authenticated encryption (X.509, TLS), single sign-on (OAuth OIDC), multi-factor authentication (OATH OTP), and encryption / signing (JWE, JWT, NaCl). We built the tool for our customers to debug and operate our certificate authority, OAuth IdP, and to authenticate to our identity-aware / policy-enforcing proxy from the command line. Some of these infra bits will be open sourced too, over time.
In the meantime we figured the core tool might be useful to other people for debugging, scripting, and automation. You can use it in a bash script to authenticate to Google using OAuth, or to securely connect to your own services that use OAuth OIDC for single sign-on. You can use it to implement MFA for SSH. You can use it to encrypt secrets for services (simple secret management). It's also got all of the core functionality you need to build a simple certificate authority. It's still pretty low level at the moment, but it's a whole lot easier to use for this sort of stuff than OpenSSL. Hope people find it useful!