This is broadly how StorJ works. I've used them before and it's a pretty cool storage solution (https://www.storj.io)
Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
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Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
They already acknowledged this in the faq fwiw.
They acknowledged it but dismissed it with an incorrect statement, and then declared victory with "checkmate HP fans" despite actually being wrong.
Cool. Not being privy to Harry Potter inside baseball I could not tell from your original comment whether you had seen that FAQ entry.
Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
#33There's a cool paper-based backup tool that also uses Shamir Secret Sharing to let you distribute a bunch of paper copies to your friends to restore a file optically: https://github.com/cyphar/paperback
Is this different or do they do the exact same thing? https://github.com/paritytech/banana_split
It’s the same but with a framework to share between people rather than just hiding pieces of paper around the world.
Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
#34> Q) This isn't really in line with how horcruxes work in the harry potter universe! > A) It's pretty close! You can't allow any one horcrux to be used to resurrect the original file (and why would you that would be useless) but you can allow two horcruxes to do it (so only off by one). Checkmate HP fans. Well the whole point of hurcruxes is to have backup in several places. This tool to backup your backups in severa…
Yes, but no! Technically, horcruxes were backups, but the emotional weight of the concept came from splitting your soul, lessening your essence as you hedge against danger. Partial backups follow the spirit of the idea better. As an aside, I read the concept as an attack on promiscuity. "Whore crux". Contrast to Lord of the Rings' assault on marriage, where wearing the ring makes you invisible and slowly fade into no…
> Contrast to Lord of the Rings' assault on marriage, where wearing the ring makes you invisible and slowly fade into nothingness, "like butter being scraped over too much bread".
Wait, what ? Eh...
Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
#35No mention of libgfshare, which comes with utilities `gfsplit` and `gfcombine`: https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/gfsplit.1.h...
We use it in production to pregenerate a pool of certificate requests for SSL key pinning. Rotating a key requires m-of-n cooperation.
Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
#36I can think of several ways to "take a password encrypted file and split it up in such a way that you can re-assemble it without all of its parts" but being able to do so without a password is where it's piqued my interest.
This is one of those things that looks interesting to me as someone who enjoys security topics, algorithms and the like. I can see digging into the source code/reading about the techniques involved because I want to know how it was done. But I am struggling to figure out where something like this would be useful -- is there a threat model where this would be useful as a "layer in the onion" of things protecting sensitive data or a way in which this would be superior for a use case that isn't already solved better by something else?
Even the author kind of jokes about an old diary password vs remembering enough hiding places. I think the latter would be a much bigger problem from personal experience and would require having fewer parts and more hiding places, eroding the provided security in the process[0]. :)
Multi-sig comes to mind, but my only exposure to that is "having to participate in it" by "putting a USB key in and running a program along with two of my coworkers" in order to push the one update we ever pushed with that tooling. I remember we all had to provide our keys and "if I was out sick, no update was going out" but I'm not sure if that was a limitation of what we were using or if we just set them up that way because it was "alpha" at the time.
None-the-less, very interesting!
[0] I can imagine, though, that "under the mattress" would be the equivalent security to setting your password to "password".
Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
#37I was just thinking about something like this problem. At $work, we use multi-signature signing to move cryptocurrency around, so that at least N of M officers of the company need to sign, to prove that "the company" actually intends a movement of funds to happen. This ensures that no single officer can embezzle funds; and it also ensures that an attacker would have to do some kind of multi-target simultaneous coordi…
If x officers died in a freak accident where there's not enough for N to sign, is there a way to recover?
Seems no different than if all N parties with the key were lost. Is there a backup strategy in case the key people are all wiped out simultaneously? How does ICANN handle it?
There was a recent story[0] about a crypto company where everyone "lost" the keys (I assume inside job).
Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
#38Does this use a mix of striping with oarity and public key cryptography?
Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
#39Cool name
Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
#40> Q) This isn't really in line with how horcruxes work in the harry potter universe! > A) It's pretty close! You can't allow any one horcrux to be used to resurrect the original file (and why would you that would be useless) but you can allow two horcruxes to do it (so only off by one). Checkmate HP fans. Well the whole point of hurcruxes is to have backup in several places. This tool to backup your backups in severa…
Yes, but no! Technically, horcruxes were backups, but the emotional weight of the concept came from splitting your soul, lessening your essence as you hedge against danger. Partial backups follow the spirit of the idea better. As an aside, I read the concept as an attack on promiscuity. "Whore crux". Contrast to Lord of the Rings' assault on marriage, where wearing the ring makes you invisible and slowly fade into no…
To be fair, the creator of HP is a crazy conservative. So, the idea of "Whore crux" being an attempt of fighting promiscuity isn't surprising.