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Show HN: Qrkey – Offline private key backup on paper

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Re: Show HN: Qrkey – Offline private key backup on paper

#11

Post by henry700 »

saclark11 wrote: post #10

Something similar, but encrypted, is PaperAge [1]. Admittedly, I haven't used it, but it seems like a nice solution for secure physical backup of small secrets. The catch, of course, is now you need to make sure you never forget your passphrase or back that up off-site somewhere else. [1]: https://github.com/matiaskorhonen/paper-age

The paper security backup "d'oh" equivalent to this would naturally be storing the encrypted PaperAge QR codes in the same physical location as the unencrypted QRkey paper containing the decryption key. Which would be hilarious to witness.

Re: Show HN: Qrkey – Offline private key backup on paper

#12

Post by mook »

cornstalks wrote: post #8

I keep meaning to do something like this in combination with Shamir’s secret sharing (which allows you to split a secret into M blocks, of which any N can be combined to recover the key, and M and N are configurable) to distribute a private key among family members in case of my untimely demise so they can more easily access my financial accounts and stuff. Has anyone done that before, and if so, what tools do you pr…

I've seen https://github.com/cyphar/paperback before which basically does this, I believe. I haven't used it in the context of letting other people recover things though.

Re: Show HN: Qrkey – Offline private key backup on paper

#14

Post by detaro »

tantalor wrote: post #13

> Recover from a PDF with QR codes with a barcode scanner Barcode scanners scan bar codes, not QR codes.

QR codes are commonly considered a type of barcode. cf wikipedia: "A QR code, quick-response code, is a type of two-dimensional matrix barcode"

Re: Show HN: Qrkey – Offline private key backup on paper

#16

Post by vorgol »

mook wrote: post #12
cornstalks wrote: post #8

I keep meaning to do something like this in combination with Shamir’s secret sharing (which allows you to split a secret into M blocks, of which any N can be combined to recover the key, and M and N are configurable) to distribute a private key among family members in case of my untimely demise so they can more easily access my financial accounts and stuff. Has anyone done that before, and if so, what tools do you pr…

I've seen https://github.com/cyphar/paperback before which basically does this, I believe. I haven't used it in the context of letting other people recover things though.

Visual cryptography is really cool. Shamir and Naor came up with an algorithm in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cryptography#Example

Basically hand out transparencies to n people, and they all have to overlap to see the picture. It's like magic when you're playing with them.

Re: Show HN: Qrkey – Offline private key backup on paper

#17

Post by vorgol »

s0ss wrote: post #5
qualeed wrote: post #2

What is the benefit of using a QR code over just printing and storing the document itself in a human-readable format? I'm trying to think of when/why I would want to add the extra step of converting to/from QR codes for the documents I keep in my safe, but I'm not coming up with any reasonable use case. I'm sure I could just be missing the use case(s) the author has in mind, perhaps they should be suggested in the re…

Machine-readable expedited/convenient recovery as opposed to manual transcription. Data entry sucks.

> Data entry sucks

These are the kindest words I've heard about data entry.

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