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Where exactly are people supposed to store their recovery keys? I get that theoretically it’s supposed to be cold storage. Suppose you’re actually targeted by
by rjzzleep 5y ago
Where exactly are people supposed to store their recovery keys? I get that theoretically it’s supposed to be cold storage.
Suppose you’re actually targeted by government, and you want to protect access you only have two possibilities.
Store it in encrypted cold storage that people that are targeting you have access to or forget them altogether and lose access yourself.
I feel like people have forgetting what is actually being protected from.
Most MFA apps on iOS either store the keys in iCloud Keychain or some some third party sync service or not at all when your phone breaks.
I think the threat model isn’t well thought through at all.
An offline encrypted keystore doesn’t in fact have a worse security characteristic than most options listed above.
And yes theoretically an hsm is better but realistically speaking I think a physical key that I carry around every day isn’t almighty either.
- UncleMeat 5y agoIf you are actually targeted by the government they'll pwn you with zero days on your browser or whatever. No authentication scheme will save you at that point. Real users should protect against credential stuffing and, if they can manage it, phishing.
- Joeri 5y agoI think being targeted by government or a similar class of advanced threat is not something you should really think about when choosing how you manage passwords, as they will have many ways to target you that don’t involve password compromise at all. Password managers and MFA are about protecting from account compromise by run of the mill cybercriminals. Storing recovery keys on a piece of paper in a safe place is perfectly fine for that class of threats.