41–46 of 46 posts
The usage guide shows which command to run to generate a QR code from a file, and outputs a PDF. But then the command for recovering a file from QR codes takes "file.txt" as input. Is that a typo? Shouldn't that input also be a PDF?
It isn't the PDF you started with once you print it.. A QR code scanner in a camera app, etc, will return text such as a URI.
HOWEVER, backup keys are meant to be used in very rare cases. And in these very rare cases I'd like to have a backup key that I can directly type into a terminal with the keyboard. A QR key has one too many dependencies for my liking.
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.
I get your point, but a recovery/backup key? Yeah, I really rather have that human-readable, even if it means that I'll likely need a good 30 seconds to type that into wherever I have to type that in.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're posing a good question but, if you look at things from this perspective, then every time you type the password to decrypt your private key you should worry about the possibility of some software running on your machine reading it and sending it somewhere. While you pose a valid concern, I think most people don't have to worry about this. The reason is that printing private keys isn't a common practice, so I th…
> every time you type the password to decrypt your private key you should worry about the possibility of some software running on your machine reading it and sending it somewhere. Yes, I believe you should. On OSes without sandboxing and protections against exfiltration, this is a substantial concern. And you’d be foolish to e.g. keep a bitcoin private key lying around in your home dir. For this same reason, I think…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> every time you type the password to decrypt your private key you should worry about the possibility of some software running on your machine reading it and sending it somewhere. Yes, I believe you should. On OSes without sandboxing and protections against exfiltration, this is a substantial concern. And you’d be foolish to e.g. keep a bitcoin private key lying around in your home dir. For this same reason, I think…
Sure it's a bad idea to not encrypt your private keys, but the point here was that, even if you encrypt them, they will be unencrypted when you need to use them.
Only in-memory though, right? Which shouldn't be so much of a problem.