CURL request using .netrc file

I am trying to write a script which is saving the credentials to a .netrc file and then it is reading from the file in order to pass them to a curl command and saves the returned cookie file for future use. I am interested if this is secure way to pass the username and password and if there is a man in the middle attack would they be able to sniff the credentials if the server which I am trying to reach is over HTTP. #!/bin/bash IP="192.168.0.1" user="Administrator" pass="Password1234" function credentials { mkdir "${HOME}"/.netrc rm "${HOME}"/.netrc/credentials.txt touch "${HOME}"/.netrc/credentials.txt { echo "machine ${IP}"; echo "login ${user}"; echo "password ${pass}"; } >> "${HOME}"/.netrc/credentials.txt chmod 600 "${HOME}"/.netrc/credentials.txt } function cookie { curl -v -c cookie.txt -n "${HOME}"/.netrc/credentials.txt http://"${IP}"/setup.php } credentials cookie I have checked and the credentials.txt file is properly saved in the corresponding directory and the credentials have the right permissions, but when I try to run the cookie function, I got the following error:

't find host 192.168.0.1 in the .netrc file; using defaults

. Why curl is not able to fetch the configured username and password from the credentials.txt file?