[Cryptography] Keeping backups (was Re: Separating concerns

Phillip Hallam-Baker hallam at gmail.com
Tue Sep 3 11:02:55 EDT 2013


Want to collaborate on an Internet Draft?

This is obviously useful but it can only be made useful if everyone does it
in the same way.


On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 10:14 AM, Peter Gutmann <pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz>wrote:

> Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam at gmail.com> writes:
>
> >To backup the key we tell the device to print out the escrow data on
> paper.
> >Let us imagine that there there is a single sheet of paper which is cut
> into
> >six parts as follows:
>
> You read my mind :-).  I suggested more or less this to a commercial
> provider
> a month or so back when they were trying to solve the same problem.
> Specifically it was "if you lose your key/password/whatever, you can't call
> the helpdesk to get your data back, it's really gone", which was causing
> them
> significant headaches because users just weren't expecting this sort of
> thing.
> My suggestion was to generate a web page in printable format with the key
> shares in standard software-serial-number form (XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX etc) and
> tell people to keep one part at home and one at work, or something similar,
> and to treat it like they'd treat their passport or insurance
> documentation.
>
> Peter.
>



-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/
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