[Cryptography] USB hardware token for $2??

Kent Borg kentborg at borg.org
Thu Dec 22 18:38:05 EST 2016


On 12/22/2016 03:58 PM, Ron Garret wrote:
> https://sc4.us/hsm/

That device is still gnawing at me! It seems so useful, or at least like 
it should be so useful. But it has me suffering over endpoint security. 
It could secure sensitive information for me. The display looks so 
valuable to get information out, but what about getting information in? 
How does it know I am me?

A perennial question resurfaces: what is the smallest little computer 
device with a slightly, kinda reasonably usable keyboard?

For a password safe, for portable purposes, I have an Android phone that 
I have never allowed to see a SIM and be a phone, nor even be on the 
internet. But oh, horrors, it is terrible for entering encryption keys! 
Not too bad for a password (the two are different: passwords can be 
short, encryption keys/passphrases need to be crazy long! They are very 
different...)

I can type a practiced, pretty-mostly nasty-long passphrase on a real 
keyboard, repeatedly during the course of the day, with little effort. 
But how secure is that? I use decent hygiene on that device, but it is 
not sterile. I would like something I *can* keep sterile, small enough 
to have on me, but with far more usable passphrase entry than a cheap 
Android phone I keep incommunicado.

Suggestions?

-kb


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