51–60 of 385 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first few times I shared this with (security professional) colleagues and friends, they'd dismiss it right away "this can't possibly work", but it was because they _assumed_ it didn't work (too simple). Attaching a challenge made a big difference, they'd spend 5 minutes trying to crack it and, in the process, realize it is actually sound (despite the simplicity).
Why would they dismiss this?
We still need to solve for obsolescence. You can encrypt a file today using a cypher that will eventually be removed from all browsers, desktops, and phones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with your scenario is the reading the local files without permission, not the use of the crypto API.
You are right, I'm conflating 2 issues. I'm pretty sure Brave was blocking window.crypto but can't remember if it was on a file or over plain HTTP
Blocking crypto on file:// is not to spec, and testing above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34084526) none of the browsers do that.
Why not use any of a bunch of other services? Surely you can't think your threat model allows for this but not 1pass?
It's a simple hack and I use it for 3-4 use cases for which no service exists.
Among other things:
- It works offline
- My mom can use it
- It works on any device (even a borrowed one or a newly formatted one)
- It can save me if *all* my devices get stolen
- It can save me if I'm stranded in a foreign country without any document or trusted devices,
- Etc.
"Do you think this cannot possibly be secure? Great, prove it. This secret contains the recovery key for a Bitcoin wallet. Crack it and take my money!" Love it.
This is incredibly cool! Nice demo of a modern browser API I was not aware of, and it's actually useful. I can imagine using this to email confidential PDFs and other small deliverables for clients.
One way to see this is "like encrypted PDF, but for any kind of file".
This is password protected, so then an attacker must crack the password. The author exchanges the password over a phone call, which requires the password to be relatively weak, meaning the password is probably crackable. Exchanging the password via a second channel that the other user can copy and paste a more difficult password from to decyrpt the document might be more secure. The password may be more exposed, but…