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Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

thoughtscollected.tech

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Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#41

Post by ben-schaaf »

DavideNL wrote: post #39
sneak wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This means that the time delay could be theoretically bypassed by someone other than you (as time delay access is not a cryptographic construction), which means that someone else has access today (likely Bitwarden the company), which means the end-to-end encryption has been circumvented to enable this feature, which means they could be issued a search warrant to yield all of your passwords to law enforcement immediat…

How did you come to this conclusion? I would assume that only the " trusted individual(s) " - a spouse or whatever - has the "private key" of the vault, so only that person can access it (not Bitwarden, and nothing can be circumvented.)

That just circumvents the other part of the feature; the timeout. It also means you have to trust that individual's security.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#42

Post by DavideNL »

indianmouse wrote: post #13

This has been around for a long time. I personally maintain all the information in the following format. I hope someone finds it useful. https://lifehacker.com/organize-your-familys-essential-infor... and what my family should know incase if something happen to me. https://ussvicb.org/documents/What%20My%20Family%20Should%20... Somethings like the above. I've added more info such as 2FA etc in a separate sheet and sa…

[offtopic]

I'm always surprised to see the amount of external trash/bloat scripts loaded by some websites. Thank god for uBlock Origin 'Medium Mode'...

[/offtopic]

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#43

Post by Epa095 »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #41
DavideNL wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you come to this conclusion? I would assume that only the " trusted individual(s) " - a spouse or whatever - has the "private key" of the vault, so only that person can access it (not Bitwarden, and nothing can be circumvented.)

That just circumvents the other part of the feature; the timeout. It also means you have to trust that individual's security.

Can't it be handled e.g by the spouse having "half" the key, bitwarden the other "half", which they only gives out after the timeout. Ok, bitwarden and your "trusted one" can collude to open it before, but they must both be in on it.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#44

Post by alexchamberlain »

mattmurdog wrote: post #11

My partner doesn't even know what Github or markdown is. I'm better off writing it in plain English and putting it in a bank safe.

I think this was more to inspire a rough contents and format, rather than actually proposing GitHub is a good place to store this stuff - print it out and stick it in a safe.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#45

Post by robjan »

latchkey wrote: post #19
itake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know this website will last longer than you?

I read the help page. https://www.deadmansswitch.net/help/ How can I be sure you'll outlive me? We don't have to outlive you! If the service shuts down while you're alive, we'll send you an email well in advance so you can switch services. That said, the service has been running successfully since 2007.

If the owner of the website dies, the site may shut down due to not paying the bills.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#46

Post by dividedbyzero »

avereveard wrote: post #26
cornel_io wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has failure modes, though, especially death on one of the N (might seem unlikely but I just had to help a friend unfuck a family member's finances after he died in a car accident next to the one trusted associate who had all his logins saved in an account locked behind 2FA secured by his iPhone which he didn't leave the unlock code to with anyone). I know there are other schemes where you only need M of N to tur…

Two attorneys. One attorney has failure modes too.

Better use three attorneys on at least two continents, one of them in the other hemisphere. Otherwise a single medium-size asteroid could easily wipe out all your backups and what then.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#47

Post by smaudet »

Epa095 wrote: post #43
ben-schaaf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just circumvents the other part of the feature; the timeout. It also means you have to trust that individual's security.

Can't it be handled e.g by the spouse having "half" the key, bitwarden the other "half", which they only gives out after the timeout. Ok, bitwarden and your "trusted one" can collude to open it before, but they must both be in on it.

Better just not to encrypt anything like that.

If you have a house, which has windows, your locks do not provide security against someone smashing open the window. Key cutting schemes are a bit like this - no key offers security, only one of several access routes.

Having multiple access routes may be desirable and simultaneously a concern - a fireman smashing through your window to save your life is desirable, a burglar slitting your throat after smashing through your window is not.

Encryption is more like a lockbox or a safe room - having a burglar compromise your safe room is undesirable, and going into one during a fire is also undesirable. But you do want to use one in the event of a burglary.

A key cutting scheme may be useful in the case of mutli tenancy, but it is not a reasonable dead man switch - if your data needs to be re-encrypted either the keys themselves must be related (calling into question the security of the keys), or the encrypting party must multi encrypt the data, meaning whomever does the encrypting has full access to all the key data.

If e.g. you are yourself encrypting the data, you must multi encrypt - it would be faster just to share the key yourself, as you already have all the keys. If the third party is encrypting, this means they have side channeled your data such that they can decrypt at any point.

Again, even in the case there are e.g. two mathematically related keys, you cannot then enforce a timeout without first referencing and thus controlling the original key. You MUST distribute your keys yourself to your 3rd parties, or your data cannot be secure.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#48

Post by t_mann »

javbit wrote: post #22
sema4hacker wrote: post #21

A friend of a relative had their house burglarized over a weekend. The burglars took their time and took apart everything, cutting all pictures out of their frames, etc. If a written password existed, they would have found it. The "give it to an attorney" plan would also worry me, unless I knew exactly who/what/when/where/why/how access was controlled and GUARANTEED (after all, an attorney's system could break down a…

You could probably use Shamir Secret Sharing so you'd need to have k out of n parts to recover the information. Downside is that this complicates what is supposed to be simple. edit: I see other commenters shared this idea too.

It'd increase security vis-à-vis burglars, but for it to work for this use case you'd need relatives who can recover Samir secrets.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#49

Post by Pilottwave »

aunlead wrote: post #28

I'm banking on the emergency access feature [1] of Bitwarden (available in self-hosted version too [2]). The "how it works" section has more information [3] but it essentially boils down to trusted individuals requesting access - which can be manually approved by account holder or they are automatically granted access after a pre-defined wait time. Bitwarden (paid version) also claims this - "If your premium features…

FYI: Bitwarden premium costs 10$ a year!
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