9 ms·
‘DiceKeys’ creates a master password for life with one roll
- valera_rozuvan 6y agoThe site [1] of the app is quite simple. Actually it's refreshing to see such minimalism :) ---------- [1] https://dicekeys.app/ https://dicekeys.app/
- valera_rozuvan 6y agoFor the adventurous, see the page source!
- ChrisSD 6y agoAnd take a look at the 4.8MB javascript file.
- dicekeys 6y agoAnd you will also soon be able to read the source at https://github.com/dicekeys/dicekeys-webapp https://github.com/dicekeys/dicekeys-webapp We're just figuring out whether to use an MIT license or a license that forbids use in stalkerware applications and anti-citizen surveillance applications. Some of our code is already public at https://github.com/dicekeys https://github.com/dicekeys (We welcome contributors)
- GekkePrutser 6y agoIt's not the only option if you don't like a master password. I use passwordless (GPG keys on an Yubikey) with a PIN code. The PIN can even be replaced by biometric soon. This is the way forward IMO. No more passwords at all, even master ones. If you turn on the tap-to-sign function on the yubikey you can also protect yourself from malware 'milking' your entire password database while the key is inserted. Of course I create the secrets on-key as is best practice. Of course losing the token is an issue, but I have multiple and each password is encrypted against each of them. I like this idea though. But I don't like that anyone who has a picture of the dice can generate the passwords. And I don't like leaving my password managers logged in all the time. It wouldn't work for my desired level of security, though I can imagine users who do leave their PW managers logged in, would be happy with it.
- taneq 6y ago> No more passwords at all, even master ones. Then... how do you prove you're you? And not merely someone who has your physical body in their possession? Edit: Obligatory "biometrics are usernames, not passwords."
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- masukomi 6y agopasswords don't prove you're you either. They just prove you're someone or something that knows the appropriate password.
- taneq 6y agoYeah but if you're reasonably good with security, they at least prove you were conscious and present when someone logged in.
- tatersolid 6y agoNo they don’t. See “rubber hose cryptography”, shoulder-surfing, hidden cameras, keystroke loggers, phishing.
- motohagiography 6y agoIt's a really clever idea with technical merit. More practical than the old lava lamp CRNG. It's an entropy source, and I think there are an infinite number of possible variations on what I'm calling "entropy rituals," which may or may not generate a sufficiently large field that mitigates brute force attacks. In its favour, good, exogenous entropy mitigates part of post-hoc decryption attacks and wrecks the economics of passive bulk interception and surveillance. It means that threat actor needs to a) use direct attacks on user endpoints, b) sabotage algorithm implementations to truncate keys or c) bias the entropy source with loaded dice (because everybody knows...) or longshot d) use a TAO-like operation to add dice with duplicate facets from other cubes to dice kits in transit to reduce the total field size, which would be easily discoverable, but chalked up to a "printing error."
- someonehere 6y agoI love supporting small security initiatives like this to bring more attention to these cool concepts. Ordered the two dice sets and four keys.
- oasisbob 6y agoSo at first glance, this is vaguely like Diceware, you just don't stop "playing"? http://world.std.com/~reinhold/dicewarefaq.html http://world.std.com/~reinhold/dicewarefaq.html
- dsp 6y agohttps://dicekeys.com/ https://dicekeys.com/ may be more useful than the paywalled article.
- triangleman 6y agoSo you roll the dice and then leave them in the case and never roll them again?
- elteto 6y agoIf you want to be able to recover _that_ key at some point.
- dougmany 6y agoAdd some clear casting epoxy and it would be a cool project to show all your friends. Oh wait.
- ogre_codes 6y agoOr just roll the dice, take a picture of the dice, sell the dice...
- doctoboggan 6y agoI like the idea of this, however I do not like that you are expected to keep the master key in your drawer somewhere. It’s like writing your master password on a sticky note and putting it in a drawer. I know there is always a risk of forgetting your master password but keeping it only in your brain gives you the most protection. I suspect law enforcement would have an easier time compelling you to give up your DiceKey object than forcing you to repeat your brain key. However I am not a lawyer and would be interested to hear more from those who know more about this kind of situation.
- MrLeap 6y agoIf you spill it on accident on your way to surrender it, it would be really unfortunate.
- doctoboggan 6y agoUnfortunately destruction of evidence is a crime which could aid the prosecutions arguments for consciousness of guilt and in the worth case tack on a new charge. I believe the jury could also be instructed to assume the worst in cases where evidence is destroyed.
- MrLeap 6y agoMost unfortunate. :(
- dicekeys 6y agoThe current DiceKeys box has latches to make sure it's very very hard to open accidentally or if dropped from human heights. We have thought about designing a box that's intentionally very easy to open for people who want to encrypt their laptop when traveling into a jurisdiction that may want to steal IP or compromise their journalistic sources. We'd want the user to be able to slip their hand into their pocket and release the dice from the box before anyone knows to ask for their DiceKey.
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
- tripletao 6y agoWhat's the benefit of this? You have to trust the website to faithfully scan the dice and not send their state anywhere else. If you trust the website, then you could just wiggle the mouse for entropy to seed a cryptographically-secure PRNG, generate a password in the usual way, and write the password down (or memorize it, or print it, or print it as a QR code if the scanning is important, etc.). That seems equally secure, and more convenient than carrying a set of dice with me everywhere I go. And of course a YubiKey or equivalent is the real answer. I'm trusting the developer there too, but I get a nice compact package that fits on my keyring, and a secret that never goes outside that package.
- lucgommans 6y ago> wiggle the mouse for entropy You don't have contact info in your profile, would you mind shooting me an email at mouserng-hnpublic@lucgommans.nl? As far as I could find, there has been no research into the randomness of those key-generating mouse movements, so I'm slowly (over months, probably will be years in the end) collecting data to finally do this. Collecting a trace for me shouldn't take more than two minutes of your time. (Anyone else who's interested is also welcome to mail me, by the way. The address will work for at least the next 7 days.)
- tripletao 6y agoI agree that's an interesting and under-explored question. Perhaps you could gamify it, build a website where people compete to generate the maximum bits of entropy in ten seconds, as measured after compression by an algorithm that you continuously retrain and enhance based on that user data?
- lucgommans 6y agoYeah the plan is to eventually make it public, but for the moment I want to have a reasonable amount of data to make sure I'm capturing the right things. I mean, (x,y,time) is all there is to it, but perhaps I should be measuring it in some desktop software (where I might be able to capture the interrupts and their jitter) rather than just record the movements in javascript.
- causality0 6y agoI just use 1337-speak versions of lyrics from bands I like that vaguely remind me of the subject matter for whatever I'm using the password for. I can't forget a password because I don't actually have to remember them, just be able to derive them using my personal ruleset. Excepting where data breaches or security policy forced a change, I haven't had to reset a password in over a decade.
- doctoboggan 6y agoRules like that lower the entropy orders of magnitude compared to the truly random processes described in this article. Probably still enough entropy to give you good protection, but maybe not enough from a motivated nation state or multination corp.
- phre4k 6y agoSurely a box with some plastique cubes in it will protect you from these nation states. It's not like they're buying a $5 wrench or anything.
- doctoboggan 6y agoSometimes there is value is cracking someone’s password without them knowing.
- causality0 6y agoIn the end there's a password strength ceiling, and that ceiling is the moment it becomes harder for someone to crack your password than it is for them to pay someone else to come threaten/beat you into giving them access. Anything stronger than that is just security theater. Heck, even if you assume your opponent is mostly law-abiding the password ceiling is however many dollars it takes to set a bounty that results in someone finding a 0-day for the platform for which they want your access.
- dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 6y agoThis is pretty cool. But you do need to trust their website and app, and your scanning device. Also, the website says you get about 192 bits of entropy. It's been a while since I did any combinatorics. It seems you should have 25! * ((6 * 4) ^ 25) possible dice rolls. 25! combinations of dice placement times (6 face up possibilities * 4 rotational possibilities) for 25 dice. Python gives: import math math.factorial(25) * (6 * 4)^25 496508538648719564809316402287439226010265627463254016000000 2^196 100433627766186892221372630771322662657637687111424552206336
- mmastrac 6y agoThey divide by four as there's a "canonical" direction to read the dice. See "Security Strength" at https://dicekeys.com/ https://dicekeys.com/
- dicekeys 6y agoCorrect. We believe a two-bit reduction in strength is a small price to pay to ensure you get the same key even if you scan the box at a different orientation (e.g. up-side down). We could have designed the software to try to recognize the top of the box, but the box for the steel version may look very different (or not be what you'd think of as a box at all.)
- jnwatson 6y agoThis isn't a whole lot different than `cat /dev/urandom | base64 | head -c 33`, printing it out, and laminating it.
- doctoboggan 6y agoThe difference here is that there is virtually no way for there to be a bug, virus, malware, keylogger, etc that might break the true randomness of the dice roll where all those are a possibility for the computer generated version.
- teddyh 6y agoI feel that the risk of my /dev/random being broken is much lower than some random website being intercepted or assimilated.
- doctoboggan 6y agoThe website is just an easy way to transfer the random numbers to your computer (which you arguably shouldn’t use if you need something like this.) The actual randomness generation is the dice roll, which is less likely to be broken than your /dev/random (which is probably not broken and totally fine to use)
- teddyh 6y agoI’m not comparing my /dev/random to my dice roll. I’m comparing the likelyhood of my /dev/random being broken to the likelyhood of the website being intercepted or assimilated when I use it.
- roywiggins 6y agoDoesn't a large portion of computer security rely on private keys derived through computational "dice rolls" anyway? If RNGs are that broken, the whole internet is broken- breaking a few passwords would be kind of secondary, wouldn't it? First up would be certain Bitcoin wallets, etc.
- hiccup 6y agoI feel like his t-shirt is on backwards in the video. Does that add to the geek cred?
- dicekeys 6y agoIt's my daughter's shirt. She didn't approve of any of my shirts. The front has Bugs Bunny.
- orblivion 6y ago> It's "toddler-proof," Not a parent, but this is one of the first things I thought of.
- jmole 6y agoWTH - why would they use a shitty plastic box to hold them? Drop the box, dice fall out, lose access to all your secrets?
- BitwiseFool 6y agoNo worries my friend, I will sell you some hot glue to keep those dice in place. I'm working on the Kickstarter for it as we speak!
- icedchai 6y agoJust take a pic with your phone. Nobody will have a clue what it's for.
- russfink 6y agoWhat they need with this is a human computable function that can take a short nonce and combine it with the arrangement of rolled dice to produce a secret value. This eliminates the problem of the trusted scanner. It also allows the same dice arrangement to be used for different services. If you are ever at risk of compromise, just simply discard the dice.
- dicekeys 6y agoAnd if you can demonstrate that there are functions are computable by a user community that would benefit from them, it would make a fantastic submission to the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS). But, most people are trusting software at some point. We're making sure our software is small and relatively simple so that you can audit it. That's one of the reasons why we don't take dependencies on Google's Tessearact OCR engine, or on frameworks like React. (The one big dependency we haven't removed is OpenCV.)
- ViViDboarder 6y agoOne of my concerns would be durability of the software over time. In 20 years from now, will the site still be running? Will I need to hunt down old hardware or dependencies to regenerate my key?
- sliken 6y agoThe mapping seems pretty straight forward, I don't see why it couldn't be manually done.
- dicekeys 6y agoYou can, in fact, do it manually. T4r means letter T, digit 4, facing right. The directions are 't', 'r', 'b', 'l' (top, right, bottom left), which makes for a mnemonic you can follow with "right here in river city".) Before you transcribe, just rotate the box so that the first letter in the alphabet appears in the top left, than read in English order (left to right, then top to bottom). The crypto library: cpp: https://github.com/dicekeys/seeded-crypto https://github.com/dicekeys/seeded-crypto ts/js: https://github.com/dicekeys/seeded-crypto-js https://github.com/dicekeys/seeded-crypto-js
- mastre_ 6y agoAt the very least it's a really cool talking point and way to lead into crypto, esp. when talking to kids about it. And some cool dice ;)
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoThis is cute and might work around the house, but I wouldn’t entrust anything serious to it. As soon as your traveling and don’t have it, or your kids rearrange it, or someone else gets a picture of it, then it the novelty is definitely gone. You could just as easily use a deck of playing cards or to construct a password and it would have exactly the same issues. Yubikeys win the day again and again, I just more sites support them. The financial sites that would benefit most are still stuck on easily spoofed SMS authentication - if they even have that.