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Assume your devices are compromised

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131–140 of 197 posts

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#131
I have macsec (L2) separation for my dev hosts and out-of-band keying with Nitrokeys. So lateral movement in my LAN cannot reach my dev station on IP level. Don't trust my router (zyxel) Chinese firmware.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#133
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here you can see how I'm using Shamir Secret Sharing, I gave clear instructions on how to use the shares and in what circumstances. based on their dynamics, I'm feeling pretty good. I know I have some people there that are tech savvy + some that will take good care of their shares and when they should send those to whom. Implementation is trivial (especially if you find a library) but maybe you can be inspired by my…

I was wondering, how much do you trust these tools? Cryptography can be extremely tricky to implement. For example, has the tool been checked for side-channel attacks? Has it had any other audits? (On the GitHub page of the library, it says it's no longer maintained)

I trust it enough no solve my DR scenario. If I was targeted by the NSA, I don't expect this to keep me safe.

I don't think SecretSharingDotNet has had any audits, and I'm pretty sure i hasn't been checked for side-channel attacks. I couldn't find anything in GitHub [1] saying it's no longer maintained though.

I'm pretty sure a well founded attacker would be able to hack me, but I think it's orders of magnitude more likely that I'll forget my master password, I'll get stolen, my apartment will catch on fire or I'll just die. Those are the scenarios I'm preparing for.

[1]: https://github.com/shinji-san/SecretSharingDotNet

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#134
post #3

These are fun thought experiments, but I think having a personal Disaster Recovery plan is a far more applicable security exercise. What would you do if you lost your phone? If you were locked out of your google account? If you forgot your password manager master password? If your home was destroyed in a fire? Having a secure plan for quickly recovering from these scenarios is more important than trying to keep state…

I debate this with myself often. Short of renting a security box and telling people I trust about it, I haven’t come up with a strategy for the master password. At the moment, I’ve resigned myself to the feeling that if I lose my memory, maybe it’ll be the opportunity for a fresh start, and so losing everything is a feature not a bug.

I wrote a tool for this[1,2], though it's still a work in progress (all the features work but I still need to finalise the QR data format and work on user-friendly interfaces).

[1]: https://github.com/cyphar/paperback [2]: https://youtu.be/GI9rKdM9rB8

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I debate this with myself often. Short of renting a security box and telling people I trust about it, I haven’t come up with a strategy for the master password. At the moment, I’ve resigned myself to the feeling that if I lose my memory, maybe it’ll be the opportunity for a fresh start, and so losing everything is a feature not a bug.

I wrote mine down and put it in an envelope containing a few other secrets in a small fire-resistant, waterproof safe which my wife knows how to open.

So basically you bet everything on eternal love.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wrote up instructions for accessing my backups for my wife and friend, and my critical accounts have dead-man switches to give my wife access to everything she would need. Assuming what she needs is access to my email (yes) and gigabyte of photos from my drunk college days (no).

What are you using for a deadman switch?

The system I'd trust most is to have 2 attorneys given sealed envelopes with instructions to give them to your wife on your death. One attorney is given an envelope with the passwords to your accounts (or to your password manager) encrypted with a one time pad. The other attorney is given an envelope with the key to it. Each envelope includes instructions to decrypt. If you're giving her a password to a password manager, make sure she has access to the latest password archive and the software to open it.

Tedious, yes. But fairly reliable and you don't have to place any trust in your attorneys at all, unless they find out who their counterpart is and start working together (very unlikely). If this system wouldn't work for you, you've probably got bigger problems than having to worry about your wife getting into your email after you die.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#138
post #3

These are fun thought experiments, but I think having a personal Disaster Recovery plan is a far more applicable security exercise. What would you do if you lost your phone? If you were locked out of your google account? If you forgot your password manager master password? If your home was destroyed in a fire? Having a secure plan for quickly recovering from these scenarios is more important than trying to keep state…

If you forgot your password manager master password? Short of brain damage, I don't think that would ever happen. It would be a hassle for my family if I died, though. I'm young, but I should still get that scenario worked out.

I forgot mine twice, after having used it for years. And no brain damage yet (at least I think so). Fortunately, in both cases it came back after a few days. Problem with piece of paper - in case of brain damage, I will forget where that piece of paper is hidden ...

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#139
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Google would sell me a letter mail with my Gmail recovery passwords on a nice durable laminated card.

Or you could just print it up yourself. Why is it G's responsibility and not yours?

Your printer is connected to internet these days and quite probably has backdoors ...

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just send four trusted family members half of the passphrase in a sealed envelope and tell them what it's for. If your family has a lawyer or safe deposit box trusting that instead is a 1000x better option.

Lawyer yes, safe deposit hell no. Three reasons: - Banks fubar safe deposit boxes all of the time, in a variety of ways. - Once the bank figures out that you’re dead, it’s sealed without a court order. - As you get older it’s more likely that you’ll screw up payments, lose keys or codes, etc. Also, the attorney will advise your loved ones on what they can do. For example, you need a power of attorney for many things.

Can lawyers be trusted with this? Do they also properly manage their own death and other events? I don't have any experience and I'm genuinely curious how all this works.
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