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Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

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Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#41
post #32
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not an extreme Harry Potter fan or anything. It just bothers me when people ride the coattails of some popular term/phrase but then get it wrong. Another one is “isomorphic” as in “isomorphic JavaScript” which abuses the term from mathematics to mean something completely unrelated.

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#42
post #26

I 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?

Yes, if you plan for it. There are several mitigation strategies for this.

The simple approach, if you have enough people you fully trust, is to just have a larger number of participating signers / distributed key-splits than you need, such that you don't actually need a majority of the key-splits to be used, to achieve a signing quorum. (E.g., instead of 2-of-3 signing, you'd use 2-of-4 or 2-of-5 signing.)

In this setup, usually there's a "core" of signers who are active participants in the system, where the required quorum size does constitute a majority of the "core" of signers; and then there are other "backup" signers, who aren't normally participants in signing as part of their job duties, but who can be called upon to act as additional signers in an emergency — usually just to participate in a "handover of power" (activation of new keys) for new signers (e.g. if the CIO and COO die, and you hire a new CIO and COO.)

These signers should not be anyone who any of the "core" signers has power over — not any of their reports, not anyone they can fire, and not their own friends or family. (Personal acquaintances from outside the company do make good "backup" signers, though — an officer's personal accountant is a frequent choice.)

Also, ideally, there should not be enough such "backup" signers that a single "active" signer could collude with the "backup" signers to embezzle funds. The signing configuration should still always imply the need for at least two "active" signers. (So 2-of-4 / 2-of-5 are actually bad configurations; a minimal ideal configuration would be more like 3-of-5 (with one backup signer), or 4-of-7 (with two backup signers); and you don't get both "not a majority" + "at least two active" together until 4-of-9 (2 backup) signing.)

A more expensive version of this approach, but one which could be considered more secure and with less required trust, is to give the extra signing key splits needed to achieve a signing quorum to one or more law firms, under contract to only release those key-splits upon a legal notice of demand from all still-living members of the signing group. The law firm must then verify for itself that 1. enough people are dead that the signing quorum condition can indeed no longer be met without first activating one of the offline'd keys; and 2. exactly all remaining living members of the signing quorum really want the keys released (probably this would be done through in-person individual interviews and notarizations.)

Also, to prevent this arrangement from acting as a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tontine (in the sense that it incentivizes murdering your co-officers), usually there would be a line in this contract stipulating that the keys won't be handed over while the still-living signers are under suspicion of directly or indirectly murdering the dead signers; and that the keys will only be handed over after a 60–90-day delay (which gives time for such a suspicion to arise, if relevant.)

Another mitigation strategy, that works well in combination with either of the above, is for officers with signing keys to leave their password-locked hardware signing device (smart card, crypto wallet, etc.) with a trusted coworker whenever they're going somewhere potentially dangerous; and to leave the password to unlocking said signing device with the executor of their will, only to be released upon their death. In this setup, people who travel are temporarily unable to sign (the person they've entrusted their signing device to doesn't have its password, and so cannot sign for them); so travel scheduling + signing configuration must be planned together to ensure that a signing quorum is always possible to achieve.

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#44
post #40
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is ridiculous, Rowling's political views are completely unremarkable for a 58-year old woman and if anything leans liberal. Very few normies in their late fifties would survive the scrutiny she got.

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#46
post #43

What's the practical benefit over just sharding a decryption key and handing out multiple shards to each person?

1. You need all the shards of the key to decrypt the text instead of just reaching a threshold.

2. The full encrypted text is available to each person, making it vulnerable to a brute force attack at some point in the far future.

I'm not entirely sure if this implementation actually covers that second point though. It could be including the entire encrypted text with each copy. But it would theoretically be possible to protect against brute force attacks in that way.

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#47
post #40
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#48
post #44
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is ridiculous, Rowling's political views are completely unremarkable for a 58-year old woman and if anything leans liberal. Very few normies in their late fifties would survive the scrutiny she got.

She blasts her views on twitter constantly — she deserves all the scrutiny she gets.
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