Recover NickServ credentials from a Quassel database

A C++17 command-line utility for the SQLite schema used by Quassel 0.14.0. It takes one argument: the path to the database. The database is opened with SQLITE_OPEN_READONLY; the utility neither creates a missing database nor modifies stored data.

Build and run

Dependencies on Debian/Ubuntu: build-essential libsqlite3-dev.

From the restore directory:

make
./restore-nickserv "$HOME/.config/quassel-irc.org/quassel-storage.sqlite"

Alternatively, build without make:

g++ -std=c++17 -O2 -Wall -Wextra -Wpedantic main.cpp -lsqlite3 -o restore-nickserv

The database path may differ, for example if Quassel uses --configdir. For a straightforward recovery, close Quassel before reading the database. If working with a copy, copy the database after Quassel has shut down normally: while SQLite is running, the latest data may be in the adjacent -wal file.

Output

All networks belonging to all core users, even when auto-identification is disabled.
The NickServ service and saved password (autoidentifyservice, autoidentifypassword).
The associated identity, real name, ident, and all configured nicknames in order.
Server addresses, ports, and TLS settings.
The SASL account and password: an alternative way to authenticate to an IRC account.
Connect, attach, and detach commands, which may also contain an IDENTIFY command.

Quassel does not store a separate NickServ account name in its auto-identification settings: the code sends <service> IDENTIFY <password>. Nicknames are therefore listed separately; they are not guaranteed to match the registered account name.

Strings are enclosed in quotes. NULL means no value is stored; "" means an empty string. Newlines, tabs, quotes, and backslashes are escaped as \n, \t, \", and \\; other control characters are escaped as \xHH. Escaping is only used for display and is not part of the password.

The output contains passwords in plain text. To save it to a file accessible only to its owner:

(umask 077; ./restore-nickserv /path/to/quassel-storage.sqlite > recovered.txt)

The utility extracts saved values but does not check whether they are still valid on the IRC server. If a password was never saved, it cannot be recovered from this database. Exit codes: 0 for success, 1 for a read/output error or an incompatible schema, and 2 for an incorrect number of arguments.