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I've locked myself out of my digital life
- throw457 4y agoI keep an encrypted backup and second yubikey at my workplace.
- hprotagonist 4y agoThose are two streams I sure as hell don’t want to cross!
- willis936 4y agoWhich is exactly why it makes for a good out-of-band failsafe.
- kalleboo 4y agoI work from home...
- durnygbur 4y agoDuring my whole career there was only one workplace in which I would store stuff critical for my personal life.
- uniqueuid 4y agoI'm just as guilty as everybody for not doing this, but ... perfect is again the enemy of good. Instead of a technically superior backup with rotation and all, it may be better to have some arbitrary, incomplete old backup lying around on a disk at someone's place.
- makeitdouble 4y agoI’d freak out if a friend came to me with a disk and told me to keep it safe. Imagining someday I go on vacation and valuables are stolen, including that disk. Now that friend’s supposedly personal data is compromised, as of course they would set a lower protection on something that is supposed to be used during emergencies. Same if the disk gets corrupted because we didn’t realize it’s stored next to the fan, and 2 years were enough to have an impact. Or we lose it when moving but nobody realizes the loss. So many weird scenarios, I’d feel more confident if they gave me their kid to raise for 5 years.
- microtonal 4y agoImagining someday I go on vacation and valuables are stolen, including that disk. Now that friend’s supposedly personal data is compromised, as of course they would set a lower protection on something that is supposed to be used during emergencies. Just use LUKS or FileVault full disk encryption. Your friend just has to memorize one password. If it gets stolen, it's as good to a thieve as random data. Same if the disk gets corrupted because we didn’t realize it’s stored next to the fan, and 2 years were enough to have an impact. I would tell them to make more than one off-site copy. It's their responsibility to not just depend on you.
- makeitdouble 4y agoTBH I wouldn't expect someone stealing hard drives along more valuable stuff to just plug it to their Windows machine and call it a day because it doesn't mount. Also the thief doesn't need to be the one dealing with the data, the same way people stealing cars are usually not the ones brokering them, and brute forcing an offline password wouldn't be crazy long considering it's supposed to be memorable (possibly by more than one person) Just to say, spreading backup hard disks here and there, and assume everything will be fine even if some of them get lost in the wild feels like a pretty laid back attitude in contrast to the length spent on having a fully functional 2FA system.
- night-rider 4y agoOnce you know your master pass phrase in Bitwarden + email you can get back in. Providing of course you don’t enable 2FA, which could lock you out if your Yubikey gets destroyed. Bitwarden has an ‘attachments’ feature so you can upload the QR code seed image used to setup TOTP so you can set up all your TOTP accounts again in an authenticator app in a worst case scenario.
- buro9 4y agoI do this. But I also enable 2FA and store the seed for that publicly... on the internet. Just without any context at all as to what it does. By itself the 2FA seed is useless. You need to know what it does, and you also need the email (it's not my public email) and the password (which is very strong). I also have a set of plain instructions that my partner has explaining how to Bitwarden and access all the things if needed, including how to use a 2FA app, etc.
- night-rider 4y agoWorth noting: Bitwarden gives you a recovery code incase you lose your 2FA device. So as Terrence Eden said: invest in a safety deposit box and store the recovery code there. Or memorize it if you can.
- sph 4y agoHaving no 2FA on your password manager is incredibly reckless. That and your email are by far the two most important things you own.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoThis is a very good example of vulnerability introduced by badly organized security system. One does not keep backup access codes in places which are unavailable in case of a failure of primary access methods. Store your 2FAs in a separate phone kept in a SAFE, a combination to which you do remember. Also, adding 2FA to a password manager is probably excessive, just use a really long password which is easy to remember. Like "HowOn5EarthsCanAPersonForgetHisPazzw0rdToPasswordManager?", that'll be enough.
- avsteele 4y agoWith no second factor you are vulnerable to anything that could sniff your password. I guess this is fine as long as you never log on from any untrusted machine/location?
- viraptor 4y agoAlso any phishing you don't notice, or many browser hacks. A good 2fa (u2f, fido) authenticates you to the service, but also verifies the service is what you expect.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoI'm rather averse to using cloud services for password management. KeePass all the way, syncing the key file with syncthing or something.
- fullstop 4y agoThe author's codes were kept (on paper) in a safe, but the contents were destroyed in the fire.
- roopepal 4y agoJust in case you did not notice, this did not actually happen, it was a hypothetical.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tpool 4y ago- "Sadly, the fire-proof safe wasn't lightning-strike safe and is now obliterated." But... the lightning strike caused a fire. That shouldn't mean the fire is "extra hot" or something like that. I'm disturbed, as I keep these kinds of thing in my fire safe for just such a reason.
- altairprime 4y agoThe 2017 Tubbs wildfire burned so hot that it melted fireproof safes, as I understand it. Something about 50-100mph winds and incompetent forest fuel management making the fire burn extra hot?
- Filligree 4y agoA fire-proof safe is a safe which won't be destroyed by a fire. That doesn't mean it won't heat up.
- ubermonkey 4y agoFire safes are rated by time and temperature. A particularly intense house fire could exceed the parameters of one's safe.
- leksak 4y agoIt was all hypothetical > In the meantime, please rest assured that my home is still standing. But, if you can, please donate generously to the DEC's Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal
- pif 4y ago> All my passwords are stored in a Password Manager. And that is the problem! I've never bought the hype about a different password for each service. I've 4 passwords in total, sorted by importance, and each new service gets the one most appropriate according to the data it manages. So, having Hacker News pirated means my Quora account is at risk: so what? And really important stuff (read: banks) is protected by two-factor authentication anyway. > In the boring analogue world - I am pretty sure that I'd be able to convince a human that I am who I say I am. Not really, if you have spent your whole life introducing you as "qjkhgjbhjhgjhgj" to one person and "opiqnbasvwnezc" to the other.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoThis literally is saying that if someone compromises one of the passwords you use for all the important stuff like banking, they've literally just gained access to every important account you have which can be life changing in a very bad way. Props on using four passwords instead of just one, though.
- pif 4y ago> And really important stuff (read: banks) is protected by two-factor authentication anyway.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoStill a bad idea, you're leaking information for social engineering attacks either against you or the company holding your account. Anyway your 2FA is acting to make your passwords actually unique, in a sense, I suppose. Not that I'd necessarily trust it on its own.
- pif 4y agoThe worst information leaks are passwords written on a post-it, and they are usually the outcome of obnoxious safety rules.
- 4y ago
- kalleboo 4y agoTwo-factor authentication terrifies me. For my bank from my country of origin that I maintain, I get a battery-powered RSA token. From that I can generate a mobile 2FA token in an app that I can use to log in for day-to-day transaction. If I lose the devices with the 2FA token, I have to pray that that CR2032 is still alive or I lose access to that account until I spend thousands of dollars on international flights (replacing the battery resets the device)
- causi 4y agoI would suggest keeping an eye on the voltage with a meter and when it starts to drop solder on a second battery while you replace the first, the same way people replace game cartridge batteries without losing SRAM saves.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoThat's a great recipe to fumble and accidentally reset the device.
- causi 4y agoHow? The original battery provides power while you're soldering on the backup and the backup is solidly soldered on while you swap out the original. How could you be so clumsy you rip out a solder joint?
- kilroy123 4y agoThis is one of my great fears. I'm a nomad and all my possessions are in two bags I carry around with me from country to country. It's much easier for this to happen to me. Not sure what the solution is? In the past I've tucked away a piece of paper with recover codes on it at a family members house. So in such an emergency I could call them up and tell them where it is. I should really do that again.
- nicbou 4y agoWhat about snail mail to a relative？
- alexpotato 4y agoI would imagine you could reach an agreement with a digital savvy lawyer (or law firm) to provide a service to: - store important information - have human processes to get you access if needed
- lupire 4y agoThis is called "escrow" and is extremely common.
- Comevius 4y agoRecovery codes can be stored publicly, but deniably on the internet. It would be like finding a hay in a haystack. No need to call anyone, just download a picture of a cat and decrypt it.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoThis is a cool idea and I've been contemplating it myself - but if you don't control the picture, whay if someone chabges it or recompresses it, then its binary changes and you are screwed. You are better off with a famous historical text, like in 'invincible' they sued Frankenstein. But it has to be with a clear and indusputed original, not something that has mutiple translations. What if drumroll its a good uisecase for blockchain? Like use hash of block number 200 or smth.
- oefrha 4y ago2FA with password manager is pretty much asking for trouble. Any compromise that is capable of leaking my master password can’t be stopped by a second factor.
- sph 4y agoWhat do you mean? I need both my Yubikey and my password to log in to my password manager. If my master password gets leaked somehow, they still need my Yubikey, which is on my person at all times. The CIA could infiltrate my house when I'm sleeping and steal my Yubikey, but any other idiot on the internet that wants my data has no chance, which is what I'm most concerned about.
- oefrha 4y agoTo leak my master password, “any other idiot on the internet” needs to do one of four things: (1) backdoor my password manager; (2) install a keylogger to capture it while I’m typing it in; (3) somehow grab a copy of the encrypted database and crack it offline; (4) read my mind. (1) is game over; (2) with that level of access they can also steal everything while the password manager is unlocked; (3) with offline cracking, any 2FA protection just extends the password, and my master password is strong enough for any idiot on the Internet; (4) can’t defend against magic.
- sph 4y agoSorry, I'm not sure I follow. First you say that 2FA is useless if someone gets your master password, which is wrong, now you argue that stealing a master password is very hard. What exactly is your point?
- oefrha 4y agoI outlined all the scenarios where the master password can be stolen. In none of the scenarios does a 2FA offer additional protection.
- 4y ago
- causi 4y agoIt's almost comedic that the point of backups is to remove the single point of failure and then security paranoia creates new ones. Perhaps what I should have done is stored all my backup codes and recovery keys on a USB stick and then given them to a friend? If you're going to be that secure, put them on a USB stick and bury it in your yard or in the hollow of a tree. Easier to update and won't be destroyed when your house burns down.
- pcthrowaway 4y agoThis obviously requires you to have a yard, which is probably not that common for city dwellers (even people renting houses shouldn't really be digging up their yard, and if you live in a duplex quadplex, you're sharing that yard with some number of neighbours of varying trustworthiness)
- foobarian 4y agoI wonder if you could just store a microSD card in a weather proof container taped or attached magnetically to the underside of a bench or other urban fixture. Place 5-6 of them for redundancy and keep them up to date.
- 369548684892826 4y agoAnother thing - flash storage that hasn't been powered up for a few years will probably have lost data. Better to get backup codes down on paper.
- Inhibit 4y agoThis happens. I've had SDCards sitting in devices long enough unpowered that they required a format when spun back up.
- aaronmdjones 4y agoLarge-capacity flash drives are very cheap; and you can write the same data (e.g. archive files) many times to the same drive to guard against some filesystem or file-level corruption. There are also tools like par2(1) that can create parity recovery data for files; you could write those many times too. My online backup solution that backs up the root filesystem for all of my machines generates a rolling tarball of that and then creates par2 recovery data for that tarball at 10% redundancy, and keeps 30 days of tarballs in addition to the current snapshot of the filesystem itself. This is because I store them on high-capacity spinning rust drives, which do have a small but non-zero data error rate. Additionally, forensic tools like photorec(1) can recover these files even from severely damaged filesystems. Then the only things you need to worry about are "device doesn't enumerate at all when I plug it in" and such. I'm sure you can have 2 devices side-by-side to mitigate that.
- raverbashing 4y agoThis is why, while 2FA is important, it's not a panacea (and things like the article do happen - which is why I'm always very skeptical of "2FA everything" people) Some passwords you absolutely do have to memorize. And that is fine. I keep those good passwords for services run by professionals. Also recovery codes exist (side note if the pictures are correct - the sim card and the Yubikey might be salvageable)
- _pdp_ 4y agoThere is a 3rd way which is not widely adopted yet and it requires to handover some personal documents, but that is to use an IDV service as a fallback. There are obviously some disadvantages as well I am sure you can think of.
- ruuda 4y agoHow do you still have access to your blog to be able to publish this article?
- navhc 4y agoThe article ends with "In the meantime, please rest assured that my home is still standing." So presumably it's all hypothetical.
- netsharc 4y agoAlso the very first paragraph is "Imagine...". I missed both of these, and wondered why an HN commenter said luckily everything is fine..
- ntoskrnl 4y agoThe first paragraph also says "Imagine…" I skipped over it the first time around, but that made the rest of the post hit harder. This was pretty well written.
- edent 4y agoThank you
- withinboredom 4y agoRead the last paragraph.
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoWe are all now on the precarious stilts of technology. Apple is the worst regarding this scenario. They force 2FA like you are a child. I get it, in most cases 2FA is great, but my lifestyle makes it a problem.
- tpetry 4y agoThe problem is more that you have to use Apple's 2FA which is linked to their devices. You lose them all at once because you are robbed? Good luck! There isn't any way to get a TOTP key you can store in a password manager.
- microtonal 4y agoI was under the impression that the Secure iCloud Keychain recovery functionality that was added in the last iOS/macOS update could be used to recover. https://support.apple.com/nl-nl/guide/security/secdeb202947/1/web/1 https://support.apple.com/nl-nl/guide/security/secdeb202947/... https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212513 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212513 Unfortunately, the recovery procedure is not described anywhere, so I am not completely sure...
- satysin 4y agoYou can still get a TOTP code from Apple via SMS to your trusted phone numbers. When it prompts you for the TOTP code select “Didn’t get a verification code?” and you can pick one of your trusted phone numbers no problem. I have had to use this in the past and it works fine.
- jonnycomputer 4y agoI very nearly was not able to login to my Apple account on a new computer because I did not have an old device to verify, and of course I hadn't kept the master recovery key where I could remember where to find it.
- tpetry 4y agoThat problem is solved by how 1Password works: * Your password vult is encrypted locally and stored on their servers (just an encrypted file!) * To unlock the vault, you need the password and the generated master code. * The master code is a PDF to print, which you can give someone you trust – they still only have half of the things to get access. The losing of digital life is completely solved. Just print that damn PDF give it to your parents and remember your password.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoNot really solved - forgetting a password is where you started. Does it help to say "Just remember the password!"?
- sillysaurusx 4y agoIt’s a lot easier to remember one specific password. Especially when you need to enter it at regular intervals.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoNot solved, because your parents could lose a piece of paper (I'd say that's actually a fairly high risk, not just theoretical). Anyone could lose a piece of paper, for that matter. You want multiple, distributed across at least three continents to be sure. The same with your password. ;-)
- tpetry 4y agoSure, you don't have to stop at distributing just once copy…
- horsawlarway 4y agoEven then - this is a fairly ugly solution. You're dependent on an external entity to be responsible with your stuff in the case of an emergency. I love my friends and family, but I'm not sure I'd trust them to keep a random file/paper for years on end "just in case" and still be able to find it when I need it. Personally - I went with the "extra yubikey in a safe deposit box" approach, and it still feels super shitty. I'm not at all a fan of "code is law".
- phphphphp 4y agoI went through the process of considering this recently, and considered a safe deposit box, but as mentioned, they're not viable in many places. I eventually settled on multiple security keys, distributed across multiple locations I have access to. And it got me thinking, is there a business opportunity in providing secure storage for security keys? Safe deposit boxes are, as the post notes, either mythical or extremely expensive and inconvenient. I can come up with a few challenges to running such a service, and a few solutions, but I ultimately come back to thinking: nobody smart enough to use a security key is going to trust some third-party to store their emergency key, no matter what security methods are implemented. Am I right in that assumption?
- withinboredom 4y agoProbably correct. The correct answer is something I’m working on for fun. Basically, witness encryption of a sort. If you can cryptographically/mathematically prove something has happened, you can decrypt a “bootstrap” of your digital life. I’m working on the tooling/encryption bits now, but I already have a (not published) service that monitors phones/computers for “liveness” and provides a cryptographic proof that they are dead when they go offline for a configurable amount of time. You can use that as an input for the witness encryption, along other inputs. You can just store that file in the open, maybe encrypting only your 1password master key or a backup code to your email.
- alexpotato 4y agoI remember reading a story about backups right after one of the California wildfires and the author said something like this: "I used to store my backups in the garage and thought myself smart since they were physically separate from my desktop. Then ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS burned down and I realized I needed more physical distance"
- sph 4y agoSorry to hear that, @edent, and as someone that just got a Yubikey [1], it sounds like I need to place the spare one at a geographically distinct place ASAP, rather than in a lockbox in my house. Easier said than done. -- 1: only my mail and password manager are protected with my Yubikeys. As long as I can have access to one key, I'm safe. Which means if I lose access to both my FIDO keys, I'm fucked.
- sph 4y agoAh, I should read to the end before commenting. Happy to know the house is still standing.
- tomkaos 4y agoI don't 2FA my password manager and email because of the fear of being lock out of everything. I travel a lot and some country I can't received sms. What hapen if I got stole everything. Loose access to my email, bank account .. I don't event know people number because it's in my phone.
- jclem 4y ago1Password “forces” (strongly suggests to) you to physically print a recovery kit with both your master password and secret key on it. I keep mine in a safe deposit box in another part of the city. Of course, losing access to this box is a concern, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I suppose I could also bury it somewhere remote too without the QR code or my identifiable information in it, or mail a copy to a family member.
- jzdziarski 4y agoFirst, I’m so glad this turned out to be hypothetical, and you didn’t have to suffer through such a catastrophic loss. Second, if you had actually suffered such a loss, your digital life would hopefully be the last thing on your mind, and you’d just be glad to have your life and your family - the only real things that matter in this world. That said, planning a strategy for offsite data storage or a secondary authenticator is of course wise. A safety deposit box or other offsite location that you can frequently refresh and keep up to date would be a good investment. If you’re worried about keeping a master key to your life in a single place, you could separate your data and your authenticator. The how likely depends on your threat model, several people on this site may find it insufficient. To whatever degree you obfuscate or complicate your recovery path, you also increase the risk of losing access to it yourself. You might also consider it’s not necessarily the “thing you have” that might go MIA, but due to physical injury, age, or just forgetfulness, the “thing you know” could also be at risk. I realize this the older I get. Finding a secure way to store a master password in the event you cannot recall it, or perhaps in the event of your death, is something you may also consider. In this case, I would avoid a cipher or something else you’re likely to forget.
- makeitdouble 4y ago> Second, if you had actually suffered such a loss, your digital life would hopefully be the last thing on your mind To note, our banking system is well part of our digital life. Europe has already a flurry of “real” banks that have no physical presence, and after a catastrophic loss you’ll need that access to your bank as soon as possible.
- basisword 4y agoThis has made me think twice about using those banks (I'm thinking of Monzo etc.). I was already reconsidering anyway as all of these banks have been consistently reducing features and limiting usage (e.g. cash withdrawals) and generally making themselves worse than the 'real' banks.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
- martin_a 4y agoLots of made up problems here. Officials will provide you with replacement/temporary documents in a relatively short time, when you have lost them due to a fire or sth. else. With those you can start rebuilding your infrastructure. Get new credit/debit cards, buy a new phone, get a replacement SIM from your provider, that way get access to your 2FA system again... Yeah, it's inconvenient and will take some time, but it's not hopeless.
- snowwrestler 4y agoIf your 2FA was based on the device itself, like an Authenticator app, a new phone with a replacement SIM will not help you.
- martin_a 4y agoI see. That's a single point of failure, introduced by yourself. Might be good for some, bad for others.
- reedlaw 4y agoOne way to circumvent this is to use a strong passphrase to deterministically generate the PGP/SSH key [1] to unlock other passwords. The SSH key could grant access to a remote server with backups and the PGP key could decrypt passwords using pass [2]. Of course, the "master" passphrase must be kept safe or remembered. 1. https://github.com/skeeto/passphrase2pgp https://github.com/skeeto/passphrase2pgp 2. https://www.passwordstore.org/ https://www.passwordstore.org/
- chexum 4y agopass is great for availability, I think I have several friends even in other countries (if a VPS wouldn't be sufficient) that would lend me space with a shell account for a "pass git push". Of course, the gpg key is an issue, just as well the password or the ssh key for those accounts. In addition to passphrase2pgp, you could also use paperkey and keep it storage and/or a bank safe. I, for one, store my GPG key on a Yubikey. Of course, I would have thought I'm storing it safely, but it's left in my laptop for a few days now, so chances are I would simply leave it there in an actual emergency. However, pass also supports (re)encrypting with multiple keys, and one more Yubikey can then be kept with friends/family, and it can also store backup SSH keys. Having multiple copies of ssh and GPG keys and the passwordstore git repo, chances are great to be able to recover most of the online presence. If a phone/tablet itself can be saved, it could also host another mirror of the GIT repo (for example with an app like Working Copy), accelerating recovery. paperkey: https://www.jabberwocky.com/software/paperkey/ https://www.jabberwocky.com/software/paperkey/
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pass_throwaway 4y agoI don’t use a password manager. Instead, I have a formula in my head to generate a unique complex password for each site or online service based on its domain name and some other optional parameters, if the site has password constraints (eg. no special characters, short maximum length). I have an encrypted plain text file (just a .txt in an encrypted macOS disk image) containing all of the parameters (if any) to generate the passwords for each site, which I keep on Dropbox, accessible at public URL I have memorized. This lets me easily update my password parameters file (open the disk image on my computer, update the .txt file, close the disk image).
- AdmiralAsshat 4y agoThe problem with this technique is that if it's generated algorithmically with no "randomness" to it, someone else can figure it out. You might be doing everything right, but perhaps your vendor's database gets breached, and your plaintext password for Adobe gets posted on the darkweb. So if someone sees that your plaintext password is "1a2s3d4fAdobe5g6h!", they might then infer how you "construct" your password, and then go try logging into your Amazon account with the same email address and "1a2s3d4fAmazon5g6h!" as the password.
- pass_throwaway 4y agoThe algorithm is considerably more complicated than that. Somebody would have to get ahold of several of my passwords (and the names of the services they lead to) to figure out my algorithm. For that to happen, someone would have to invest a large amount of resources to specifically target me, in which case I probably have bigger problems to worry about than some relatively low-stakes online accounts getting compromised. For extremely sensitive accounts (eg. bank, primary email) my passwords do not follow this scheme. Remember, the vast majority of password reuse attacks are automatic credential stuffing, not deliberate, individual targeting.
- kingaillas 4y agoNobody is going to bother with reverse engineering your algorithm, or even bother targeting you individually, when it is orders of magnitudes more likely your passwords will be revealed via a garden variety database breach/leak. That low stakes online account you have? That's also the one likely to have their user account/password database stolen, which was stored plaintext. Basically the threat model I am worried about is: random website gets hacked and loses its password database. So if criminals hack two such sites and correlate email addresses, they will see two essentially fully random passwords for me. If that happens to you, they might notice a pattern in website url and prefix/postfix characters.
- MarkusWandel 4y agoMy digital life isn't as cloud-based. Most of it is in locally stored files. For example, my Gmail account is synced to a local Thunderbird instance and all my photo and video storage is local. I have two sets of backup hard disks (each set is a current one, and an old one, both of which get synced; the old one only with the more important stuff since it is smaller). Both sets are LUKS encrypted. One set lives in the filing cabinet at the office (during the COVID lockdown it was at a friend's house). An automatic nag system bugs me if either set hasn't been updated for 40 days. Updating them is semi-manual. Plug them in, enter the decryption code, run a script stored on the disk itself that gathers all the data - from all over my LAN - that needs backing up. When it's done, unmount and unplug the disk. Make sure one set is always offsite - update set A, take it to the office, store it there, bring set B home, update it. It's not perfect. If the sort of disaster in this article were to strike, I'd potentially not have the last month's data. But I would have all my passwords (backed up on these disks) and if I had something that gives a last-resort recovery code, that too would be on there - in a separately encrypted sub-filesystem that I know the password to. This is so the super sensitive stuff isn't even decrypted fulltime on my home machine. I should have readable copies of all the important physical documents and cards in this separately encrypted subfolder too, but currently don't.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoWhy use such drives instead of like a NAS that you can access remotely? Isn't this more hasstle?
- bombcar 4y agoOff-line backups prevent entire classes of issues; for example, off-line backups can't be destroyed by a virus or ransomware attack.
- 0xCMP 4y agoIt is likely to protect against accidental or malicious modification of the data. eg ransomware. Also not being "in use" makes it less likely to have a mechanical failure.
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- 0x53 4y agoI use a variation of the USB to a friend method that I call horcruxing. Several USBs distributed to different friends that contain enough info for me to get back into my cloud synced password manage (plus a copy of all the passwords I have at that time). The USB is encrypted with a password I have memorized.
- RalfWausE 4y agoSomething like this DID happen to me a few years ago... but really? If i don't regard the lost documents (ID, drivers license, ownership documents...) took me a few months to get newly issued and there is still a gmail and amazon account out there i will perhaps never be able to log in again there was really no big problem. This is also the incident that convinced me to NEVER leave my current bank: I am at a tiny, tiny local bank with perhaps 50 employees... so, they did know me and it was no problem to get money and a new set of cards. The funny thing is: Before that incident i was contemplating about moving to a more modern bank which offers an app...
- the_af 4y ago> i will perhaps never be able to log in again there was really no big problem. If you use Google as your identity provider and Gmail as your recovery (or registration) email for every online service you use, it's a big problem. Remember: you don't remember all those passwords (if you do, they are probably weak) so you need the recovery email. But you cannot access your email, because you lost both your phone and 2FA to log in elsewhere. So it's not just Gmail, it's every online thing you use. But maybe you don't use Google and Gmail like this. Maybe you have a separate username/password for every single online thing. Ok... what were those passwords again?
- RalfWausE 4y agoIn some instances i could remember the password in others... now, i just created a new account if i did think i would need the service. Overall, even if i did not gain ANY of this accounts back it wouldnt really harm my life. I would have to recreate some stuff from memory, find some other providers, all things considered it would have been more of an inconvenience than a real problem.
- the_af 4y agoSome of these accounts may be services you sank real money into. Say, Steam or iTunes or whatnot. Or maybe you've built a reputation out of these accounts. Maybe you lost access to a blog or some other thing where you wrote or stored important stuff that matters to you. If your stance is "hey, it doesn't matter if I lose all access to my online life" then yes, I can see why this wouldn't be a problem for you. This article wasn't meant for you then, but for the rest of us.
- polote 4y agoThe issue here, is that OP planned for his house to be destroyed and having is phone OR not having is phone but still having his house. But didn't plan for having his house destroyed AND loosing its phone. One can still imagine a scenario where you can loose your phone AND your house AND another recovery method etc
- viraptor 4y agoI've got an escape hatch for most of my auth. An encrypted file with my bitwarden backup and recovery codes exists in a public not listable s3 bucket under a random uuid file name. I've got its (partial) name stored with friends without any context. I hope I'll never have to use it...
- nmlt 4y agoWhy not publish that uuid (not yours but generally)? If the file is properly encrypted why not keep it in a public GitHub repository for example?
- viraptor 4y agoBecause given enough time all encryption will fall or become very affordable to crack, so it's not in my interest to have it scraped and stored somewhere forever.
- cbanek 4y agoI've been thinking about this recently in terms of end of life type stuff. By the time I die (hopefully), access to digital accounts will be a major part of end of life care. Being able to deactivate accounts, set up things, or notify them to close is so much easier if you just have the passwords and details up front. Of course I use 1Password for the passwords. I'm working with an estate attorney to help with a living trust and will for all the legalities too. But I'm going to give my attorney the 1Password recovery PDF for sure. And of course, attorneys generally have pretty good document storage and recovery scenarios too. So not just someone who is locked out, but doesn't know my passwords. How can they be given the keys at the right time to do what they need? (Like if I'm in the hospital, etc.). It's a hard problem.
- drivers99 4y agoAlways have two or more yubikeys. I think every howto about those tells you about that. This thought experiment is a good reminder I need to physically separate them though.
- jackewiehose 4y agoI don't understand the point of having 2FA with your password manager. When I open my password manager on a malware infected PC it doesn't matter how the password vault is opened. Once it's opened it is available in RAM and the malware is able to read it completely anyway. My passwords are stored in Keepass on an encrypted backup disc, locally and also in another household. There is no way I would make the accessibility to something important like that dependent on additional hardware.
- pertique 4y agoI see a few use cases depending on the password manager. For local, it probably doesn't add too much. For cloud-based solutions, it mitigates the risk of having your master password snooped when typing it in public.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bennyp101 4y agoSo I do actually use a safety deposit box at the bank he mentions - and I think it is worth the £20 a month. It does contain a backup yubikey (which is set as a master for creating new ones) as well as a printed paper copy of my private key. The 2nd slot on it stores the secret key for my 1password so I can get back into that if needed. I use Authy for 2FA which is backed up with a decent password that I know - but would be pretty tricky to guess. The bank have a photo of myself and wife, along with signatures - so when you go to access it they compare your photo (I had to show ID last time as I had grown a beard which looked nothing like me) and have you sign to access. So I think even if I had lost my card with my account details on it, I should still be able to get back into my digital life. Edit: Even if the safety deposit key is destroyed, you can get a replacement for <insert fairly high amount of money> if it came to it.
- HillBates 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoInteresting. It seems that there is no digital life. There are bits of information out there that only you can unscramble but there is nothing other than passwords binding these to your identity. How is this solved in the real world? Gated access and obfuscation? Having a safe that is perfect and indestructible (encryption) only to rely on a flimsy key (yubikey, remembering passwords, etc.) is asking for trouble.
- sylware 4y agohuh? In my country, everybody is registered in several administration databases with enough data to re-id you anywhere, anytime, and they even have biometric data (usually your finger prints) and medical data (they know where you have scars, and have probably some DNA infos). In the information age, ppl have to be sure their administration and corpos are using this power sanely for the Right(TM) stuff or things will turn to ...
- edent 4y agoThe UK - for better or worse - doesn't have a centralised ID system. Biometrics aren't routinely logged unless you get entangled with the law. I may be registered in several different databases. But how do I prove that I am me? If the answer is that I know my mother's maiden name and address history - that means a fraudster could also access those accounts.
- sylware 4y agoPassports usually have, at least, your finger prints in the chip. And as I said, they have tons of data on you (pics, medical stuff, telecom, etc). It all depends on how ez it is for the competent administrative services to access those databases (do you really think the MI6 does not have access to those database?) Why do you think having microsoft having access to the global networks of IT professionals via its owned linkedin database is something that should not even be possible?
- dpcx 4y agoFor those that follow the "take a backup drive to a relatives house" - how do you actually do the backups in that case? Do you have two backup jobs running, one for "the important stuff" and one for the rest of the system, and the important stuff just goes to the other disk? I'm trying to get better about this, but this is something I've never fully understood.
- satysin 4y agoI have an old SFF Dell OptiPlex at my mothers house in another country. It isn't on 24/7 as I have it set to power on automagically weekly so it is up during my scheduled backup window. If I need it any other time a simple phone call to my mother and she can hit the power button. Then I can just access it thanks to WireGuard. The setup is simple, it runs Debian with four drives. The OS and primary data is RAID1 then two independent drives that a script automatically keeps everything in sync so I have three copies of everything over four drives. I also have two USB flash drives with it (but not connected) that have an identical OS setup on so should the local system drives die I can ask my mother to pop in the USB and boot it up and still access the 2nd and 3rd backup drives. It all works when I have tested it out although never needed to actually use it. This isn't for multimedia of course just my really important stuff such as 2FA recovery keys, scans of passports and legal paperwork, etc. As it is only a few GB I don't bother to delete anything ever, I only ever add so even if I rescan in stuff it doesn't replace the old copy. It is all encrypted on my end first so even if someone steals the machine the data is as safe as it is anywhere else. Is it perfect? Nah but it is more than good enough and hasn't failed me. I also have local backups of course, this is really my last resort kind of thing.
- michaelt 4y agoThings that change regularly get encrypted and backed up to the cloud. The credentials for accessing those backups get encrypted and backed up at a relative's house. So you almost never need to update the data at the relative's house. Although you might want to check they haven't lost it from time to time :)
- Aeolun 4y agoFor some reason, I did not appreciate this hypothetical. I spent my whole blog post feeling sorry for this person only for them to suddenly declare it was all fake, and then immediately ask for money. Normally I’m quite good about these things, but this was too much.
- kup0 4y agoAgreed, it should have been noted upfront that it was hypothetical
- sillysaurusx 4y agoAgreed, and I’m surprised no one else is saying it. It activates the “I was just assaulted” empathy regions of my brain. Seeing that it was fake was like, oh, not assaulted, just lying for literary effect. Okay. Like everyone else, I’m glad they’re ok, and didn’t have to suffer through this.
- jamespo 4y agoYes, I got a similar feeling as to when I watched Fargo which lied about it being a true story
- martinhath 4y agoThe very first line in the post is "Imagine ...". Was it not clear that what followed what hypothetical, or was the post edited after you commented?
- Aeolun 4y agoI’m not sure if there was any edit or not, I certainly felt it actually happened, though I’ll admit there were a few discrepancies. E.g. the picture of the burning house is a McMansion, but the author indicates they live in the Uk. The passport is clearly set on fire, etc. But I could justify these as ‘well, obviously there is nothing left, so the author just took a random picture of a burning passport’.
- edent 4y ago
- Whitespace 4y agoThis recently happened to me after my laptop and phone were stolen on vacation. Everything is in 1Password. I of course didn't have the recovery paper with me. I recently changed my iCloud password to be more secure, and luckily I remembered it. But I needed 2FA to log in still. I had to go to an AT&T store, port my phone number to a different iPhone, restore from an iCloud backup using the SMS 2FA, and then I could finally log into 1Password for my passwords and MFA. If I didn't have a memorable iCloud password this would have been impossible without the 1Password recovery paper. Devices are often lost/stolen on vacation where the myriad layers of protection are extremely hard — if not impossible — to penetrate.
- doctorhandshake 4y agoFor this reason on long trips I travel with a laminated recovery password inside the zip of a ‘secret pocket’ in a belt.
- bombcar 4y agoOne nice thing about recovery passwords is you don't need to put the account name/email with it (you'll presumably remember that). That reduces the risk of losing it a bit.
- joshstrange 4y agoThis is why some of my most important accounts (iCloud, Google) are passwords that I've forced myself to memorize. I've been stuck in the chicken and egg quagmire before and it really sucks. iCloud is particularly bad especially on the phone because none of the popups have password manager support so you have to manually go look it up, navigate back to whatever prompted for the password, and re-trigger the dialog.
- petesergeant 4y agoI've got several little USB drives with the recovery key on it, although at the moment I'm also trying to use Anki to memorize it...
- wintermutestwin 4y ago
- ricardobeat 4y agoKeep OTP recovery codes in a separate online account (rarely used) with a strong password you can memorize. This lets you recover accounts even if all your devices are gone.
- jjnoakes 4y agoI think for most people, a rarely used account with a strong password would be very hard to memorize for a long time.
- orangepurple 4y agoSafety deposit boxes are an unequivocally terrible idea. They have very few safeguards, subject to seizure easily, and contents are uninsured or minimally insured. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20545276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20545276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106695
- wintermutestwin 4y agoI get that SD boxes aren't as great as we'd expect them to be, but they can still be part of a reasonable disaster recovery strategy: I live in a fire prone area. I have a safe deposit box 30 mins away in a place that won't burn. I keep a HD there with all my photos on it. I refresh the drive monthly. The chance that this small credit union with maybe 100 boxes will lose, toss or sell my box on fire day is pretty minimal.
- orangepurple 4y agoI concede that they may be OK as storage unit for backup copies which can be replaced relatively cheaply and may work well if you check that your backup still exists and functions. Just don't be like that watch collector that lost everything.
- basisword 4y ago>> But, suppose I had stored everything off-site. All I'd need to do is walk up to the bank and show some ID which proved that I was the authorised user of that box. >> The ID which has just been sacrificed in tribute to mighty Thor and now looks like a melted waxwork. How is this not the solution? You can get new ID from the government and then access the box.
- nikanj 4y agoThis was discussed under "Bootstrapping of trust" in the same article. Getting new ID requires money+people who vouch for you, both of which you can't access without having access to them. It's circular dependencies all the way down.
- basisword 4y agoAh, I glossed over it and missed that. I guess the point of this is that it's an absolute worst case scenario, which is highly unlikely for anyone. Most people will have an out (e.g. in reality you probably can find someone to vouch for you - doctor, priest, lawyer, if not friends that live close by and if you can find a friend nearby asking for a lend of $50 for ID application in your time of need will probably be successful).
- tmountain 4y agoWhere I live, the DMV will issue you a new driver’s license without any accompanying documents. They use facial recognition to verify your identity. This brings its own issues to the table, but it solves this problem.
- krallja 4y agoIt’s just that easy, huh? Here are the problems I would face when trying to get an ID from the government without having any ID. My state’s DMV wants to see: * One document (with full name) proving identity and date of birth. [A birth certificate.] * One document (with full name and full Social Security number) confirming Social Security number * Two documents (with current physical address) proving state residency The U.S. State Department requires you to apply in person for a new passport if your old one is destroyed. Processing, issuing, and delivering it currently takes about half a year. Oh yeah, and you will need to bring your birth certificate. I just requested a certified birth certificate from the register of deeds in my county, and they said it SHOULD be ready by December. So, I should be able to exist again by … next summer.
- rvieira 4y agoIt's not perfect (nothing is?) but to ease my 2FA fears I keep two copies. One on authenticator app on my mobile. Another as keepassXC TOPT entries in a file in a USB stick. To have a perfect mirror requires adding both (mobile and keepassXC) when enabling 2FA for the first time, as few services allow to see the 2FA key after enabling it.
- EGreg 4y agoIt's simple ... just have offsite backup and sync (TM) As for bootstrapping your identity, consider having a couple devices that need your biometrics to generate a password and unlock stuff, and store them in various banks or buried under a tree. If you ever get amnesia, you can always implant the location info in your ass like Jason Bourne.
- IAmNotAFix 4y agoThis raises the question: How does having your password manager breached compares to losing access to your password manager?
- pqs 4y agoMy country issues ID cards. Police has biometric data on me (fingers and photo). I guess in my country I can easily obtain a new ID card and from here, prove my identity to the different providers. I guess it is very hard still, but better than nothing. Isn't it?
- layer8 4y agoRight. Unless you use a completely anonymous service payed by mailing cash in, you should be able to bootstrap your way back in, it just may take some time. I’ll say that a company whose daily business depends on some 2FA-protected service should ensure that they have redundant second factors stored at a different location.
- bombcar 4y agoMost places allow you to "bootstrap" back up from nearly nothing, but it can involve getting a copy of your original birth certificate from the county/hospital, etc. This is also a reason why you should keep all expired IDs around in a safe location separate from your normal life; even an expired passport/driver license can help get the bureaucracy to get you setup again. When you're in a situation like this, you're working to convince the person at the DMV counter that you're who you say you are, and expired IDs, along with utility bills, etc, can go very far. Convincing a computer is much more difficult, which is the point of this article.
- epigramx 4y agoThe mistake here, is that 2FA is used in a circular logic hence it's not useful to use it. If you must avoid 2FA being a problem in a situation like this just don't use it; remember a password or otherwise keep it secure; never lose it.
- Helmut10001 4y agoThanks for listing this overview and worst case scenario. I can say, for myself, that my current setup covers this situation. Everything is immediatly synced to my server located offsite, through IPSEC, meaning I have at every time at least two copies of data that are physically separate. My password manager needs a password file and key. the key I remember, the password file is in my encrypted ZFS volume on my server. If my phone (dies), I can still get the password file from my laptop or from the server; if the server dies, I still have it on my laptop or phone. It is extremely unlikely that all three die at the same time. Yet, even for this scenario, I have a printed out list of password of my password manager, hidden at a location that is usually inaccessible. Of course, I follow the 3-2-1(-0) rule, providing additional piece-of-mind beyond that "worst case". So yes, I agree fully: Prepare for worst (and hope for best). For anyone thinking about self-hosting, I suggest to place your server not at your main place - host it offsite (e.g. at your parents house). Makes you also better in remote work and produces overall more stable systems (because driving 100km is a painful motivator).
- HPsquared 4y agoAn idea for the key file: this can also be something you can reproduce, like a text file with a sentence acting effectively as a 'second password'. Or some other thing that you can recreate from scratch.
- Helmut10001 4y agoYes, good point.. the keyfile is basically comparable to OTP, just that it is more flexible. In my case, it is indeed a file with specific format (keepass), but other systems ar emore open.
- danbrooks 4y agoI was a little skeptical of the fire when all of his ID documents were only half-burned. :)
- epigramx 4y agoI noticed many people in this thread have the delusion perfect security can exist; perfect security is impossible; there are always drawbacks. You have a choice to make: it's either hard for you to unlock the relevant secret to the point of possibly being locked out yourself or: you make copies of secrets or use other redundances which makes the unlocking easier but the security lower. In most cases the reasonable choice is to make it hard even for you to fully unlock all the secrets but not to the point that is nearly impossible because at the very least: you may want to have inheritance.
- wazoox 4y agoMy passwords and important documents are sync'ed to the cloud, my office PC, my home PC, my home Mac, and my laptop. If for some reasons the three places (office, home, and DC) which are in a circle of about 40 km are destroyed at the same time, I probably could care less as there would be some major disaster like a mega earthquake, thermonuclear war, etc.
- joemazerino 4y agoIncredibly telling. How did he fake the pictures of the phone, yubikey etc.
- joshstrange 4y agoGoogle images? I mistook the initial "imagine" but read to the end to see it was hypothetical. That said the passport burning set off alarms in my head. The rest was within reason, even the house on fire (thought the non-lightning-proof fire safe sounded fishy) but he had time to take a picture of his passport while it was on fire and he didn't try to put it out? Unrealistic. I guess I should have been skeptical of /any/ pictures for that matter, especially the house since "how would he take the picture if his phone was fried".
- throwaway72937 4y agoAlmost all of my digital life is in three places: 1) Google 2) Dropbox and 3) LastPass I make it a point to pay for all of these, even though the free tier might have been good enough. I hope (maybe naively) that will help me get to a human if some disaster happens.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoI like how we have to hope your money will get you what you paid for. We really need to eatablish precedent that this state of affaira is not acceptable.
- downtownview 4y agoHas someone posted a resource, or checklist of actions I can take, or backups I should make to avoid getting in this circumstance?
- Asooka 4y agoThis is exactly why I try to opt out of any two factor authentication on some of my accounts. Yes, the 7 symbol password isn't very secure, but it's truly random and I remember it well. If anything happens, I can log into the account from anywhere and regain access to the rest of my stuff. If anyone knows how I could convince Google as well to let me opt out of two factor authentication, I would be very grateful. Obviously not for my phone account, nor for my professional account. Just for my personal email.
- superultra 4y agoI wonder if one workaround isn’t to store info like 1Password key and password - not username - in a pdf with a simple, easily remembered password, in an email IMAP account with a similarly easy password? Could even be a bitly link to a Dropbox file. I know that creates a huge security hole but it’s only one if someone else is able to identify which account it applies to.
- PontifexMinimus 4y agoI get past this by writing down by usernames/passwords in a physical book. Of course, this wouldn't help me if I lost the book.
- Zachsa999 4y agoUse a password manager to that allows custom encrypted vault storage, and gives the installer for free. Use a basic password to store the vault and installer offsite, with a memorized string of random words that fit together in such a way that you will not forget, bury a paper in your garden. I recently caught myself hosting a password manager on a home server, with the data stored in sql on the same machine both credentials of which were on the self-hosted server. Be careful with your passwords folks
- dgellow 4y agoDamn, I’m really sorry for you, that sounds like a traumatizing experience to go to. I wish you the best. Edit: wait, it is hypothetical?! Not sure how I feel about this, the whole article reads like a real situation, learning it is hypothetical from other comments makes me feel I’ve been emotionally manipulated…
- renonce 4y agoOne of the good things that cryptocurrency brings is secure cryptography devices like Ledger. It has a secure screen that allows you to copy 24-word mnemonic to a sheet of paper and recover everything from it in case you lost/damaged your device. The mnemonic can be carved onto a piece of metal that would survive fire or locked into bank safe so as to survive incidents like this. It has proven to work reliably for exchanges where billions of dollars are at stake. And best of all, it supports U2F so you can sign in to regular websites with it. I hope that such technology would find its use outside the crypto world and help us keep our identity safe.
- iLoveOncall 4y agoHow is that any different than carving your password manager's recovery key on a piece of metal?
- renonce 4y agoA nice thing to do if you don't have Ledger. But in case you change your password because of a laptop compromise you have to change it on all devices and carve it again. Ledger is much safer so you shouldn't need to do it more than once. Just make sure the mnemonic never enters the digital world - don't point a camera at it.
- maccard 4y agoHow is that any different to the recovery codes section? OP could have carved their one use passwords into the floor, for example.
- butz 4y agoTime for my "carve your 2FA recovery codes into rock" startup to shine. I might even offer offsite backups: store your rock with codes in my back yard with public access, the trick here is - no one knows which stone is whose.
- devit 4y agoYou are supposed to have an offsite backup that you can decrypt with only a password you remember, precisely in case this happens.
- javajosh 4y agoIt's probably worthwhile to keep backup identity documents and data with a trusted local friend who's number and address you have memorized. Hopefully they are not out of town or suffering a calamity, too!
- unethical_ban 4y agoI am working toward a setup where I am certain my critical data will not be lost due to broken phones or house fire. I'm also working on a strategy for death, amnesia, etc. for my friends to help if I ever forget my own password or pass away. My strategy (some parts still being implemented): * Use a password manager (Keepass) * For anything 2FA, it either can use Authy (has backup service) or has backup codes. * Authy backup code and all other backup codes are in password manager * Password manager and all important digital data is stored in AWS Glacier To be implemented: * Instructions for disaster recovery printed and stored in AWS * Master password to Keepass written in envelope in my house * AWS accounts, S3 buckets and Shamirs secret sharing configured so that any 2/5 friends or family can login to AWS, get a copy of my safe, and together unlock it in case of death or disaster AWS Glacier Deep Archive costs about $1/TB/month and is highly redundant, so for cold storage and DR is perfect for this. Shamirs secret sharing is a cool tech for breaking up secret data between people to allow the reconstruction of a secret key. Links: https://keepass.info/ https://keepass.info/ - cross platform password safe https://authy.com/ https://authy.com/ - Free 2FA with backup service https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/glacier/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/glacier/ - Info on AWS Deep Glacier https://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/ - Great tool for backing up from local to any kind of cloud storage - I use it for encrypted uploads to AWS Glacier Deep Archive https://iancoleman.io/shamir/ https://iancoleman.io/shamir/ - Web tool for Shamir Secret Sharing
- giancarlostoro 4y agoRandom tangent, but do we even need .mobi domains anymore? The web became responsive to mobile, so I fail to see a case where it makes sense, and with Google having made .app it even defeats the idea that they could be used to market apps. Whoever runs that TLD missed the mark there honestly.
- ductsurprise 4y agoHow many times this happened to you?
- rsync 4y agoEasy solution would have been to backstop your secrets in a cloud storage account run by a firm that you can call on the phone and talk to a Unix engineer in California. It would have been a pain and we would have made you jump through all kinds of weird hoops and I would have to be personally involved… but we’d have gotten you in. After 21 years of this we’ve seen all of this - customers die, people are in comas, admins get fired… we’ve helped everyone and treated them like human beings. And yes - it does cost a bit more than backblaze.
- edent 4y agoAs I said in the post, if the company can grant access to me - they can grant access to themselves, or a malicious insider, or my twin sister. The pertinent question is - are you happy with that trade-off?
- rsync 4y ago"As I said in the post, if the company can grant access to me - they can grant access to themselves, or a malicious insider, or my twin sister." Well, presumably the access is to (seemingly) random, gibberish data that you have stored with (borg, restic, etc.). So you'll need to remember a last-ditch passphrase to your own encryption if you're using us for your backstop. We encourage all of our customers to encrypt their data here - regardless of their use-case - and we don't hold those keys. I can't overstate to you just how suspicious and spidey-sense-tingling we get when someone says they are locked out and can we help them get back in. We get very adversarial and we have a LOT of tests we can apply to their claims. The reason other firms don't do this isn't because it's not workable - but because it is time consuming and "not scalable".
- htrp 4y agoWelcome to all of the problems that business continuity planners face.
- system2 4y agoAnswer: KeePass + FTP file + Local Backup + Google Drive backup. (Can be done automatically.) KeePass file keeps backup codes for 2FA as well. Even if lose my laptop, house or any other digital media, I can still connect to my ftp or email.
- Macha 4y agoThis is ultimately why I haven't made the leap to Yubikey style auth. My backup plan depends ultimately on something I know (the password to a backed up copy of my password vault which contains 2fa codes for essential services, and backed up totp codes which are encrypted with a password in that vault for the rest).
- nicknow 4y agoI would need to recover access to my password manager and my 2FA authentication tool (which is cloud backed up.) My password manager has recovery codes and my 2FA has a recovery process. Those - and, actually my email service's recovery codes (although technically not needed, since I can use the password manager and 2FA but this would speed up my time to access) - are in hard copy and stored in my safe and at a safe at a relative's home several hundred miles away. For additional security, there is a word written on the envelope at the relative's house that the relative knows to require I provide if we are not in-person (to prevent someone faking a call and asks for the information.) The document is also sealed and included with my Will, which is held by my trusted executor. With that document I can recover access to my complete digital life. The advantage is nothing changes. New accounts are added to my password manager and 2FA, but nothing needs to change on the recovery process side. There are some other ideas I have, if I didn't have a trusted relative/friend, who I could give the document to but I haven't felt the need to implement them.
- dcow 4y agoIt doesn't even take a lightning strike to get into this type of situation. September rolls around and everyone gets a new iPhone. Many forget to migrate their password manager over before sending their old phone back. Unlike the author who clearly thinks a lot about disaster scenarios and redundancy and recovery, more casual users do not. Some get lucky and are logged in to their password manager on their desktop. Some not so much and are even locked out of their AppleID credentials. Even if you remembered to migrate your password manager, you might not have remembered to bring your MFA code app. This is the entire impetus behind Uno's productized Shamirs Secret Sharing recovery scheme: https://www.uno.app/blog/replacing-passwords-with-people https://www.uno.app/blog/replacing-passwords-with-people. Our bet is that, like the author questions in the OP, for most people with a trusted network of friends and family, the main threat vector is not hackers and nation states trying to take over their digital lives, but rather nature, age, and accidents, etc. And that social redundancy is an acceptable risk in order to mitigate the tendency we have to want to be our own single point of failure.
- shakes_mcjunkie 4y agoThis happened to me but because I broke my phone. My broken phone had Google Authenticator on it and I don't have my backup codes since I've had authenticator for years and never thought to redownload them. Anyways, now I can't login to my Facebook or Twitter anymore. Facebook doesn't seem to have any kind of account recovery and the methods they say I can use (e.g. log in from another device and you'll get a notification) don't work. I even have my phone number logged with them but apparently not as part of 2 factor, so I can't recover my account that way either. TBH this experience has really made me question using an authenticator app every again.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoI thought about this and decided I should try to protect myself against various disaster scenarios, most probable first I lose my electronics thiefs steal my electronics hackers pown me I have a stroke and forget everything I die suddenly cloud raid gives up house on fire
- ulzeraj 4y agoBitcoiners who like to take their self custody seriously often use tools like fire resistant metal plates to write their recovery seed words through a center punch tool. Products like the coinkite seed plates backup exist but it is also possible to roll your own using washers and bolts. For BIP39 only the first 4 letters of each word are necessary. You can also setup multisig or seed x0r to make sure a thief doesn’t breach into your seeds with just one plate, often stored on multiple geographic locations. I wonder if some similar strategy exists for normal master passwords. Could be a nice idea for a low-tech-product-for-high-tech-solutions product. Perhaps a metal card where the user can manually punch a QR code.
- kingcharles 4y agoI went to jail. When I got out, of the thousands of online accounts I had created over the previous 20 years I could only get back into about 3 of them. I'm probably about to return to jail, and now everything is MFA, so I have no idea how to set this up so that my friends and family can get into my accounts. My phone will be dead within weeks, so I'm going to lose my number, which is a primary factor in many logins.
- dontbenebby 4y agoThanks for this OP. If you want to bootstrap your way out of scenarios in the OPs, a passport card is proof of identity and citizenship. What I do currently, is I have a smartphone with a wallet case, which has a passport card, credit card, insurance card, and a bus pass with enough fare to take a 28X[1] to the airport. I actually just sat down to have a cortado and clean my go bag, because I had to use my mace and haven't been able to replace it. (I the past I had a smaller "TSA friendly" messenger bag that I got at an Army Navy store plus a larger black backpack which can contain... well, pretty much anything that's legal in PA for me to put into it, but since I'm a grown adult, things like sharpies, a gerber multi tool, gum bands, an umbrella, noise cancelling headphones, and several batteries and the cables to connect them to my devices are perfectly reasonable things to carry around with me on a rainy day.) Then, you keep that plus whatever weapons you think you need next to your bed. I'm left handed, so usually my phone and a large knife and mace go next to the bed[0]. Then there is a locked door with a Louisville slugger next to it. Beyond that is a second door with two chains, and something else beside that one, with the walkway in between littered with hazards. And on top of all that, I often keep a radio going so it's ambiguous if I'm home, since my landlord likes to enter my unit uninvited and not even leave a tag behind noting they were there, despite several warnings that I was perceiving their illegal behavior as threatening. (Much like your post, I had a fire scare -- my dad claimed to know someone from the mafia who might burn my home down, and I had an outlet spark out around the same time, along with a series of odd people lurking around, some of whom still return to my home to this day despite frequent reports) I'd love to have my passport card in a safe deposit box, but the last bank I looked into that with abused their access to the information I was looking for one. (They said there was a waitlist, so since I thought I'd be staying long term, I just kept my passport in a safe, or separate from my passport card in case I had an extreme incident, like having my favorite bag broken open because I had to mace someone in the face, then choke them to nearly to death when they didn't take that strong hint to get away from me.) Anyways, thanks for sharing, and if anyone has any advice on my security setup, I'm happy to take feedback. (I'm trying to avoid making the thing on my bedside a handgun loaded with .22 hollowpoints, and the thing beside the door a shotgun loaded with buckshot small enough to not penetrate a wall and kill my neighbors if I need to fire it, but I'm very annoyed I feel a need to note this level of detail and ask for feedback, given the conversations I've had off of this site leading up to today.) -- [0] The intent being to mace them, then stab them if they don't give up, then retreat to safety to call a lawyer. Not an ambulance. I'm not your caregiver. I'm not your friend. Come into my home and make me feel unsafe at night, and be prepared to die. [1] The 28X is the route that takes you to the airport in 412, it's what I reccomend anyone who cannot abide by the rules of civil society look into rathrt https://www.portauthority.org/PAAC/apps/pdfs/28X.pdf https://www.portauthority.org/PAAC/apps/pdfs/28X.pdf
- DeathArrow 4y agoI memorized a very long password, so if everything digital burns, breaks or is stollen, I can go online and retrieve the rest of my passwords. That very long password is made by applying an self made algorithm, so in case I forgot it, I can recreate it.
- catchmeifyoucan 4y agoMaybe biometric login isn’t a bad idea, since you’ll have your fingerprint
- isnhp 4y agoThis is why Apple introduces something called PASSKEYS
- bityard 4y agoThis is essentially an extreme version of the the "digital bootstrapping" problem that I ponder more regularly than is probably healthy. It often seems like an intractable problem but I think n decent solution that doesn't require a lot of work looks like this: 1. Have an encrypted file of secrets that you can access with an offline password manager like KeepassDX. This file contains not only the logins to your web accounts, but also all of your financial information like bank accounts and credit cards, drivers license number, social security numbers, etc. Protect it with ONE strong password that you memorize. Use it daily to reinforce memorization. All other accounts you have, secure them with a random password and put them in this file. You only want to remember the ONE master password. You can use browser and browser extensions for sites that don't matter much in the grand scheme of things but NOT for critical sites like bank accounts because we all know browsers are the #1 target of attackers and regularly face security problems. 2. If you have multiple devices, share the KeepassDX file somewhere "in the cloud" with something like Nextcloud or similar proprietary service that actually syncs a copy to the local device. You basically want it available in multiple places, automatically if at all possible. I wouldn't post it publicly, but don't fret too much about it falling into the wrong hands because if you remember, it's protected by a strong password that you have memorized. For added safety, copy the password file to a thumb drive every month or so and keep it in your car or your desk at work. 3. Keep all of your important digital data (financial records, family photos, etc) on a NAS in your house. If you live alone and just have one "main" computer, then an external disk will do. Encrypt the disks, put the key in your password manager. 4. Back up your NAS to remote storage every night. This can be a raspberry pi at a relative's house, or a cheap VPS, also with encrypted disks that only you have the key to. There are many variations to this, but the overall idea is to have ONE strong master password that you memorized and are forced to recall regularly which protects ONE file containing ALL of your secrets, ONE place to store your important documents, and MULTIPLE distributed backups/copies of all of these.
- atleta 4y agoProtecting your password db with a physical key sounds pretty stupid. I was always wary of 2FA for exactly this reason. It's something that you can lose or damage. Actually, it's pretty common to kill your most used 2nd factor, your mobile. The solution here is pretty simple: learn 2-3 strong passwords. Definitely learn the strong password for your password manager and a primary email account, that you can usually use to reset the password to all the other accounts anyway. And don't use 2FA for those. I only ever use 2FA if it is enforced by a service. The real danger of not using 2FA is in your password being stolen. (Using strong passwords protect against brute forcing them.) Also, about the hypotheticals: offline IDs (like passport and ID card) should be relatively easy to get hold of and once you have those you can have your bank account back. You obviously don't need to know your bank account numbers (that's not a password) and you can't fake your mother's name when you submit your data to a bank (because that's part of your ID information and it's almost certainly in your ID document anyway). Otherwise yes, use a random string whenever stupid sites ask for 'password reminders' or security questions. EDIT: fix typo.
- bergenty 4y agoYep lost my phone when I was outside the US. Couldn’t get it replaced for a month and lost all access to any accounts that had 2FA set up for that amount of time. It’s also almost impossible to get your sim replaced when you can’t show up in person and show identification I learned.
- evouga 4y agoEvery article about 2FA lists the primary email account as the most important account to secure with 2FA, precisely because it can be used to reset all other passwords. And yet interestingly when I Google "why use 2FA?" the entire first page of results lists only spurious reasons (protection against phishing, brute-force cracking, social engineering, password reuse) and not the actual reason 2FA is potentially useful for securing a single-use, strong password (protection from keylogging and MITM attacks). The thought experiment in the linked article makes it clear that using "something you own" as the second factor for your primary email account is not a good idea. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I agree that the risk of having your single, strong email password intercepted is lower than that of losing your stuff.
- jb3689 4y agoThis reminds me of the time I worked for a disaster recovery company in their backup provider division. You could choose to encrypt all of your data end-to-end, but doing so meant you had to be responsible with the encryption keys; we could not bail you out if you lost them. Unsurprisingly clients were a lot less interested in that option once we had this conversation
- productceo 4y agoThis. I never understood MFAs. In terms of ability to "log back in", it creates more "weakest links", where failure of one can lock me out of all. Most consumers don't, but I use 3+ phones at a time, picking up whichever one has battery and is near me, and replace phones multiple times a year. MFAs and similar "future-looking" security solutions seem to target majority cases, whereas I think such security solutions need to support edge cases. Currently, my best guess is magic links where I can set aliases like "this particular email" to be the source of truth, such that I can lose a device or two and still access the email, and still replace entire email if email is compromised (or regularly, just for best practice). But definitely does not feel satisfying... Big respect for experts who are thinking about this problem day and night to solve it for the humankind. Seems hard and is definitely critically important!
- secult 4y agoMy bank is changing my MFA from SMS to mobile banking auth with each and every mobile banking app update. I tried to explain them to not do so, as when I break, lose my phone, it's quite easy to use a spare or get even a new sim card with the same number, but for anything else (buying a new phone, changing limits for cash withdrawal for a new phone, buying a ticket for public transport to a physical phone shop) I need the MFA code. Which I don't have of course. And surely I don't remember the unique 9 digit random identifier that is written on my bank contract to access mobile banking hotline. Shitlock.
- wly_cdgr 4y agoI have a password strategy I like, and I'm gonna share it because you might like it too. * Create a master password root. Do not write it down anywhere - memorize it * For every account that requires a password, add a unique suffix to the root * Write down the suffixes in a file locked with the master password root * Do not use a password manager. Enter passwords manually; since they all share the same master root, you are very unlikely to ever forget it * If you do forget it anyway despite all this, you probably have bigger problems. Or maybe not, but then again, none of this shit matters anyway
- red0point 4y agoSo if any single one of your used services leaks your password, you‘re essentially screwed since the root can be determined. Have you heard of haveibeenpwned.com?
- wly_cdgr 4y agoOk, so some guy in Croatia now knows the root, so what? How does that help them? They can't access the other suffixes without physical access to my home computer. Not to mention they have no idea which part is the root and which part is the suffix
- neop1x 4y agoI used to use this as well (with site-specific part in the middle, not as a suffix) but then switched to Bitwarden and random passwords as some suffixes were not unique and with 300+ services it started being annoying to type over and over again. Also a more sophisticated attacker could intercept two passwords and see the similarity, then bruteforce just the difference.
- kuon 4y agoI regularly print my whole keepass DB on paper and I keep it in safe (fireproof) place. I never had to use it, but knowing it exists eases me a lot. I highly encourage you to do the same.
- DennisP 4y agoThis reminds me of Vitalik's piece on social recovery wallets: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html That's specifically about cryptographic keys, but the basic idea could be extended to online accounts.
- test6554 4y agoI looked into Yubikey a while back and the first thing that pooped into my head was to buy 3 and put the third one in a bank's safe deposit box. Keep one for myself and give the other to my wife.
- Ikatza 4y agoThis doesn't make sense to me. Domain admin account with a strong password and 2FA set to an SMS to my phone number or a trusted contact's phone number. Voilá. I can use that to reset my main email account 2FA and go from there for the rest of the services.
- 8fingerlouie 4y agoScenarios like this is why i keep offline archives of my most valuable digital assets, our family photos. Literally everything except the photos can be replaced/restored/recreated, however impractical. The same goes to some extent for offical papers like passports, birth certificates, etc. I keep all of our files in the cloud (using Cryptomator for privacy where needed), and keep a local mirror as well as a local versioned backup, and a versioned cloud backup (so basically 3-2-1). Besides that, i make yearly archives on Blu-Ray M-disc media of all the photos we've shot in the previous year. 25GB or 100GB media depending on how busy that year was. I make identical copies, and store them at geographically different locations. I also don't use any form of encryption, compression or archiving. The photos are simply stored "raw" on the media using whatever filesystem Blu-Ray discs use. Alongside the Blu-Rays, i also keep a couple of external drives (mechanical) that contains a full mirror of our family albums, and select personal documents like 2FA recovery codes, a backup of my 1Password, etc. This is stored as a GPG encrypted tar file. The encryption is symmetric with a strong passphrase well known to me. These drives are checked (either long S.M.A.R.T. check or badblocks), updated and rotated yearly. Again, drives stored in geographically different locations.
- journey_16162 4y agoSome things I would consider: - Have an emergency google account with stuff that is only relevant for the emergency, limited access, that you could login into from anyone's computer, not worrying that you would also compromise more important data - Use Authy and remember its backup password for 2FA codes - Use an offline password manager for important passwords, use an online manager with no 2FA for passwords relevant to an emergency situation - Keep an online backup of all your data, encrypted, on some storage service in another region - Have an emergency pendrive that has the encrypted backup of all your data and carry it with you all the time (I keep it in my wallet). Nowadays it's easy to get a 512GB pendrive. Bonus is if you are linux user and the pendrive also has a bootable system, so you can boot your entire system from a pendrive, on any computer. - Remember multiple complex passwords and use them regularly - use muscle memory + have a recovery note just in case you forget it (see the last paragraph) Note that it's unlikely for multiple things to fail at once. I.e. my laptop could get stolen or an external backup HDD could break, but it's unlikely to happen at once. All could be destroyed in a single event (like the post describes), but then there's the offshore online backup - it's extremely unlikely that it would be nuked at the same time (unless literally in a nuclear war, but that would be a bigger problem). You could also forget the encryption and password manager passwords, but again, it's unlikely it would all happen at the same time. On another note, I did lock myself out partially and almost locked myself out completely, due to forgetting a password used for encryption. I mis-typed a password to one of my password managers once, then as I tried to enter it again and again, the pattern got scrambled in my brain. That was not that difficult to recover from. But I almost did forget the password that I use to encrypt my /home and all backups. I followed the lessons from the previous mistake, took some 30 min pause and retyped the password (after 3 unsuccessful attempts previously) and I logged in. Whew. From then on, I store a part of the password on a piece of paper, scrambled with other passwords and remember the rest. The point is, never trust on muscle memory alone to store the password. It's possible to make a mistake, once you make a single mistake, it's possible to repeat the mistake and untrain the correct password from your brain permanently.
- yencabulator 4y ago> I assume my credit card companies can probably be convinced to send out replacement cards. But will they also be willing to change my address - or will the card go to the pile of ashes which was formerly my home? Credit cards are usually sent by mail, and the sender doesn't even know whether you have a mail hold, temporary mail forwarding, or 6-month forwarding due to a move set with your post office.