Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

mprimi.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 385 posts

Re: Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

#301

Post by varenc »

DDSDev wrote: post #295

This is a really cool project! One thought that I have: would there be an issue sending this file in an unsecure context where MITM is a possibility? Alice sends Bob her HTML file over an unsecured medium, and Jane intercepts this traffic, and gives Bob a modified HTML file that will report the password back to Jane. Jane can set it up so that the browser still displays the local file as it's source, but has an HTTP…

100% agree. This is why I’m always a bit dubious of in-browser decryption. At any moment a little extra snippet of JS can be added to stealthily leak my secrets. There’s no great mechanism to ensure the JS I’m running is always the same JS I ran before. Compare this to a desktop app where I always know I’m running the exact same binary I ran last time. (And if I’m not then I’m probably already pwned anyway)

For this persons use case though, assuming they’re not a person of interest to any “threat actors”, I wouldn’t be too worried.

Re: Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

#302

Post by Craighead »

varenc wrote: post #301
DDSDev wrote: post #295

This is a really cool project! One thought that I have: would there be an issue sending this file in an unsecure context where MITM is a possibility? Alice sends Bob her HTML file over an unsecured medium, and Jane intercepts this traffic, and gives Bob a modified HTML file that will report the password back to Jane. Jane can set it up so that the browser still displays the local file as it's source, but has an HTTP…

100% agree. This is why I’m always a bit dubious of in-browser decryption. At any moment a little extra snippet of JS can be added to stealthily leak my secrets. There’s no great mechanism to ensure the JS I’m running is always the same JS I ran before. Compare this to a desktop app where I always know I’m running the exact same binary I ran last time. (And if I’m not then I’m probably already pwned anyway) For this…

No post body was provided.

Re: Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

#303

Post by rogers18445 »

DDSDev wrote: post #295

This is a really cool project! One thought that I have: would there be an issue sending this file in an unsecure context where MITM is a possibility? Alice sends Bob her HTML file over an unsecured medium, and Jane intercepts this traffic, and gives Bob a modified HTML file that will report the password back to Jane. Jane can set it up so that the browser still displays the local file as it's source, but has an HTTP…

Yes. This is essentially a binary with the browser acting as the OS. And if it's hosted on a server it's a binary which may change at any moment. There isn't even a mechanism by which to freeze its hash and alert you if it changes - a browser would have to provide that functionality.

To be fair, the exact same problem afflicts something like Protonmail, so calling it a toy may be too harsh.

Re: Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

#304

Post by Spivak »

chlorion wrote: post #296
distcs wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the biggest problem with a setup like this is complete loss of access to my secrets. The crypto functions supported by browsers may change in future. A cipher algorithm used to encrypt my secrets may get deprecated and removed by the browser in future. Then I will be left with a bunch of HTML files with data that the browsers cannot decrypt anymore. GPG or vim -x might be much better choices for secrets that n…

Make sure to read this before using vim for anything crypto related! https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/638 To sum things up, the Vim maintainers are totally ignorant on the topic of cryptography, but what's worse is that they are highly stubborn and refuse to accept their ignorance while ignoring valid criticism from people who do know. This combination of traits does not mix well with cryptography, where doing thing…

I can't for the life of me understand why people haven't just switched to Neovim. Sure fine vim might be what's on your server but for your actual personal development work it's, to me, better in every way.

Re: Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

#305

Post by bobkazamakis »

maqp wrote: post #264
createdapril24 wrote: post #87

This has some desirable security properties, but I would like to see more analysis on the security side (not just: is secure or is not secure). Passwords: - Easy to memorize. Pro: Does not rely on a device, can be recovered if devices stolen. - Easy to phish. Con: Attacker can use a look-a-like page, click-jacking, and pixel extraction (frame stealing) attacks to get password & secret. - Easy to brute force. Con: Rel…

>Uses current state of art algos. Pro: Resistant to access by known methods. AES-GCM is fine sure, but the password hashing function PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA1, i.e. what turns the user's weak password into the AES-key, is the opposite of state-of-the-art in this case.

Please share this silver bullet pake with the rest of the class?

Re: Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

#306

Post by vivegi »

Cool project. Here is a feature suggestion:

One additional feature you can add is a recovery key.

You could use a time-limited master recovery key and encrypt the file's data key and store it within the HTML file as an encrypted header.

It of course increases the attack surface because an attacker can then just focus on the recovery key.

But it would help in the scenarios where the passphrase for the datakey is forgotten and you need a way to recover. By supplying the master recovery passphrase, the file's data key/passphrase can be recovered and the content decrypted.

This is a usability versus security tradeoff.

Re: Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

#307

Post by Snelius »

DDSDev wrote: post #295

This is a really cool project! One thought that I have: would there be an issue sending this file in an unsecure context where MITM is a possibility? Alice sends Bob her HTML file over an unsecured medium, and Jane intercepts this traffic, and gives Bob a modified HTML file that will report the password back to Jane. Jane can set it up so that the browser still displays the local file as it's source, but has an HTTP…

Yea. The html must have signature and Bob has public key of Alice to verify ... and we here again. :)

Re: Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

#309

Post by chrisshroba »

vivegi wrote: post #306

Cool project. Here is a feature suggestion: One additional feature you can add is a recovery key. You could use a time-limited master recovery key and encrypt the file's data key and store it within the HTML file as an encrypted header. It of course increases the attack surface because an attacker can then just focus on the recovery key. But it would help in the scenarios where the passphrase for the datakey is forgo…

What does “time limited” mean here?

Re: Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately

#310

Post by chrisshroba »

Spivak wrote: post #304
chlorion wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure to read this before using vim for anything crypto related! https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/638 To sum things up, the Vim maintainers are totally ignorant on the topic of cryptography, but what's worse is that they are highly stubborn and refuse to accept their ignorance while ignoring valid criticism from people who do know. This combination of traits does not mix well with cryptography, where doing thing…

I can't for the life of me understand why people haven't just switched to Neovim. Sure fine vim might be what's on your server but for your actual personal development work it's, to me, better in every way.

My main hesitation is that I like being able to drop my vimrc anywhere and have an (almost) identical editor experience, rather than having to maintain one config for vim and one for neovim. Been meaning to try neovim out though!
Post reply on HN