Is there any way with the mailx mailrc config to hash the smtp-auth-password entry?

I can protect ~/.mail rc with permissions, but that still does not hash the actual password.

I have a use case where I would like to use a ~/.mailrc config but the system is multi-user and several people have root. Yes, a human trust issue, but nonetheless uncomfortable to hard-code a password in clear text on any system.

Thanks.

I didin't test, but this may be of some help:

I use mailx with msmtp (SMTP client, on slackbuilds.org) for sending out emails from the command line. Msmtp allows password storing methods other than plain text. In my case I created a password file that's encrypted using gpg. In the .msmtprc config file I set "passwordeval gpg -q -d ~/.email_pwd.gpg". This sets up the mail command to call gpg for handling the decryption and pulls the password from stdout of gpg.

Im not sure if/how to do it from the mailrc config directly though. Using msmtp, my .mailrc config is only contains "set sendmail=usr/bin/msmtp". Maybe someone else can chime in with a better idea but at least this setup isn't storing the password in plain text anywhere.

I haven't had time to dig into this further.

On reflection, while hashing prevents a "curious" workmate from learning my email account password, in my use case several users have root. Such a user could just su into my account. The hashing prevents learning the password but cannot prevent rogue behavior using my email account. I don't expect that to happen but we don't have good auditing configured on our systems. Yeah, I'm pushing tinfoil hat territory here.