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Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

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Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#81

Post by dang »

Related (at least by name - I think there is more than one project here). Others?

Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29395575 - Nov 2021 (11 comments)

Show HN: Horcrux, a Playground for Shamir Secret Sharing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26256726 - Feb 2021 (40 comments)

Horcrux Encrypted Messaging - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24322069 - Aug 2020 (93 comments)

I made an app that lets you split a file into horcruxes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24026445 - Aug 2020 (80 comments)

You can now make horcruxes out of your confidential files - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21933983 - Jan 2020 (17 comments)

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#82

Post by mjevans »

hmottestad wrote: post #58
mdip wrote: post #36

I 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 involve…

What about using it to share information with people for them to use in an emergency. Data is stored in multiple locations, but only someone with access to 3 of them would be able to read the data. The existing physical access controls would be the actual safety mechanism. A thief would have to break into 3 locations in order to get the data. We could just encrypt the data and then split the password into three piece…

Step 1 : Create a compressed (must not 'store') archive split into small-ish sections of size N/K.

Step 2 : Run par2 against the archive sections and create as much parity as possible.

Step 3 : Distribute any middle (not the start of the archive, and not the incomplete end piece) segments of the archive and a 'correct' number of parity / recovery packets.

If a complete count of the archive and parity pieces are brought together, par2 can recover the remaining pieces of the archive and extraction will be possible.

The hashes only (no recovery data) par2 file should be distributed with all copies.

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#83

Post by [deleted] »

mdip wrote: post #36

I 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 involve…

[deleted]

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#84

Post by sebzim4500 »

sdwr wrote: post #79
throwaway_ab wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think these concepts occurred in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Is it possible you maybe you made these up?

https://www.voxco.com/blog/everything-about-textual-analysis... "Reading" into text (similar to reading betwen the lines) is a skill taught in the arts. The idea is that there are meanings beyond the literal. Symbols can stand in for feelings or ideas, and multiple interpretations can be kinda true and not true at the same time. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nucYxqgiV7k The literal interpretation…

>"Reading" into text (similar to reading betwen the lines) is a skill taught in the arts.

Only if you use a very generous definition of the word 'skill'

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#85

Post by byteknight »

d-z-m wrote: post #78

Caution, this tool uses AES in OFB mode[0] to encrypt/decrypt the file, without any guarantee of the ciphertext integrity(no MAC). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation...

That wiki went over my (fairly) technical head. Care to ELI5?

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#86

Post by natch »

chongli wrote: post #41
natch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ok I totally get this.

Microsoft co-opted “DNS” as “Digital Nervous System” to try to exploit business decision makers’ dim acquaintance with the term. They had a pattern of doing this with other internet acronyms back in the day. Annoying af.

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#87

Post by sdwr »

johnchristopher wrote: post #65
tigerlily wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think that's ostensible, as any reading of the author's biography can attest.

Well, when it's put like that ^^. It's just that I never thought about it in that way, that outlook took me by surprise :). I read the Howard Carter biography more than 25 years ago and I don't remember much about that aspect, I was more geeking about lotr at that time than Tolkien's opinions.

Gollum is what really sells me on LotR being about marraige. He's a caricature of a woman hungry for commitment. I've seen the "gollum look" a few times in real life, and they captured it pretty damn accurately in the movies (more monstrous ofc)...

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#88

Post by kuchenbecker »

xpe wrote: post #20
gopkarthik wrote: post #3

Fun repo that uses the Shamir Secret Sharing Scheme to break a file into parts which can be recombined to get the original. From the README Who this is for: People who need to encrypt a big sensitive file like a diary and don't expect to remember any passwords years from now (but who paradoxically will be capable of remembering where they've hidden their horcruxes) People who want to transmit files across multiple ch…

And for people who are confident that the some compatible horcrux tool is still available.

Store it with the files

Re: Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments

#90

Post by zamadatix »

byteknight wrote: post #85
d-z-m wrote: post #78

Caution, this tool uses AES in OFB mode[0] to encrypt/decrypt the file, without any guarantee of the ciphertext integrity(no MAC). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation...

That wiki went over my (fairly) technical head. Care to ELI5?

My blind stab at it is this encryption always produces an output that's not validated to be what was originally encrypted and it does so in a way you could even intentionally damage a specific portion of the data without needing to know how to decrypt it.

Curious to see how wrong I am :).

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