4 ms·
Insane. Just think of the risk that this 'master key' exposed to the bank's employees. Having access to something as insanely valuable as a bank 'master key' p
by LeonM 6y ago
Insane. Just think of the risk that this 'master key' exposed to the bank's employees.
Having access to something as insanely valuable as a bank 'master key' puts the employees at risk of blackmail, extortion, etc.
That's why you have HSMs, key ceremonies, Shamir's secret sharing etc. It's not just for trust, it's also for protection of those involved.
Unauthorized wire transfers can be undone, or covered by insurance. Loss of life cannot.
- erikig 6y agoI appreciate this. I wasn't familiar with Adi Shamir's secret sharing scheme. I found this video quite helpful in clarifying how it works for cases where only a subset of the participants are required to confirm the secret. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFY5SyY3IMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFY5SyY3IMQ
- ndesaulniers 6y agoInteresting, thanks for sharing (I too was curious). This is my favorite video on Diffie-Hellman key exchange which is a slightly different problem (sharing a secret, without the constraint of dividing the key): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEBfamv-_do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEBfamv-_do (oh, hey, same channel! Guess I'll need to check out more videos from here!)
- lioeters 6y agoYesterday there was a Show HN about a purely client-side (?) implementation of Shamir's secret sharing algorithm. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23541949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23541949 https://github.com/simonfrey/s4 https://github.com/simonfrey/s4 Additional references from the app's About page. - What is Key Sharding? Shamir’s Secret Sharing Explained (Easy) https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/TQ-DsEZBuQY https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/TQ-DsEZBuQY - Shamir's Secret Sharing - Solution and alternative to Lagrange (More in-depth) https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/rWPZoz0aux4 https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/rWPZoz0aux4
- patcon 6y agoDark Crystal is another neat POC Shamir Secret Sharing tool, built by some folks involved in SSB[0] and Loomio [1] https://darkcrystal.pw/ https://darkcrystal.pw/ [0]: https://scuttlebutt.nz/ https://scuttlebutt.nz/ [1]: https://www.loomio.org/ https://www.loomio.org/
- jacobkg 6y agoThe original paper on this “How to Share a Secret” by Adi Shamir is incredible. You should absolutely read it. - The system is proven to be information theoretically secure (not just computationally) - It uses only high school math - The paper is only TWO PAGES LONG I highly recommend printing this out on a single sheet of paper (double sided) and digging in. https://cs.jhu.edu/~sdoshi/crypto/papers/shamirturing.pdf https://cs.jhu.edu/~sdoshi/crypto/papers/shamirturing.pdf
- the_svd_doctor 6y agoThanks for sharing. This is indeed genius and so simple. Brilliant.
- smichel17 6y agoThank you, I hadn't seen this before and "incredible" is definitely appropriate.
- gleenn 6y agoThat was an amazing video. I understand some fundamental crypto about secret sharing with Shamir's algo and it only took 7 minutes. Oh, and in the last 30 seconds they basically explain how bittorrent missing chunks work too. Thanks!
- anitil 6y agoWhen I was doing IT support one off the trickiest things was trying to get people to stop giving me their passwords. I am not interested in that sort of liability if something gets stolen!
- HarryHirsch 6y agoRelated to that: why are US landlords so hot on a copy of the house key? In a genuine emergency you let yourself in with an axe, in all other cases it's just a liability with no upside.
- kenhwang 6y agoIt's more a convenience thing for the tenant. Landlord can perform maintenance without the tenant being home, and door guards are common otherwise. Plus US laws tend to give landlords more power.
- Plasmoid 6y agoAs a LL I don't want to break down my door to fix a leaking faucet. It's also so I can enter for regular maintenance without needing the tenant to be there.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoHSMs make your storage more secure, but don’t really solve the problem of people having to have access to stuff. You can address those issues, but not fully, and it’s much more difficult. I’ve worked in a number of banks where my admin accounts have given me access to things like SWIFT credentials [0]. I’ve always hated having access to stuff like that, but when you start trying to figure out how to fix it you realize that no matter what you do you’re always going to have important assets protected by secrets, and people are always going to have to have some level of interaction with those secrets. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery