[144561] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: What will happen to your crypto keys when you die?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (silky)
Sat Jul 4 13:27:38 2009
Reply-To: michaelslists@gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <20090702183731.GK3917@randombit.net>
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 19:00:46 +1000
From: silky <michaelslists@gmail.com>
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 4:37 AM, Jack Lloyd<lloyd@randombit.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 02, 2009 at 09:29:30AM +1000, silky wrote:
> > A potentially amusing/silly solution would be to have one strong key
> > that you change monthly, and then, encrypt *that* key, with a method
> > that will be brute-forceable in 2 months and make it public. As long
> > as you are constantly changing your key, no-one will decrypt it in
> > time, but assuming you do die, they can potentially decrypt it while
> > arranging your funeral :)
>
> This method would not work terribly well for data at rest. Copy the
> ciphertext, start the brute force process, and two months later you
> get out everything, regardless of the fact that in the meantime the
> data was reencrypted.
Indeed, hence the reason I suggested encrypting only your "real" key
with this method. By the time you're done decrypting that, you've only
gotten a stale key. Of course the approach isn't really practical in
principle, it's only cute.
> -Jack
--
noon silky
http://lets.coozi.com.au/
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