3 ms·

I am being a little hyperbolic with the whole “destroy the PC” thing. I did have one engagement where we generated keys on a PC before importing into an HSM. (W

I am being a little hyperbolic with the whole “destroy the PC” thing. I did have one engagement where we generated keys on a PC before importing into an HSM. (We did this to be vendor agnostic on the HSM for an intended 25 year lifetime for the keys.) The PC was destroyed after the ceremony and after the plaintext keys were committed to tamper-evident envelopes. I would prefer a “security key” device with its own USB host port so I could plug a keyboard of my own choosing directly into it. A poor man’s secure PIN pad. Edit now that I'm not on my phone: I'm resigned to the fact that no mainstream hardware is ever going to be made that will do what I want. There isn't enough of a market for my desires, like so much technology today. It's yet one more step toward in my ending up a "digital hermit" figuratively living in a shack in Montana.

lxgr 4y ago
That's an interesting idea actually! Ledger (and some other hardware wallets) solve this with a few buttons and a display, but that's pretty unergonomic for longer key inputs. They're mainly advertised for crypto purposes, but at least Ledger's implementation seems decent and is usable for e.g. SSH keys and OpenPGP as well. It does the job if you only very rarely import keys, though – and in modern (asymmetric cryptography based) systems, you ideally import exactly one secret key and do the rest with public/private key cryptography derived from it, rather than having to do the tamper-evident envelope shenanigans with every partner you share keys with.
- EvanAnderson 4y ago
  The device that comes closest to what I'd like is the NitroKey HSM (and the underlying SmartCard-HSM applet it's based on). It doesn't have any secure PIN pad option that I'm aware of, though. Buying a random USB keyboard from an office supply store would be good enough for me. The tamper-evident envelope thing was for CA root keys for a DRM system to 'protect' embedded device firmware (read: revenue model) that we implemented for a Customer. The product line has a 25 year field service life. It was a requirement to be able to issue new intermediate CA certs for that period. We met with a couple large HSM vendors and decided the lock-in risk with the proprietary HSM platforms was too great. Instead we opted for a key generation and HSM commissioning ceremony modeled after the DNSSEC root key signing ceremony. It was the best way we could come up with to have the key material available for loading onto other HSMs down-the-road. I guess it turned out to be good idea (so far). I heard the Customer switched HSM in the last couple years.

lxgr 4y ago

That's an interesting idea actually! Ledger (and some other hardware wallets) solve this with a few buttons and a display, but that's pretty unergonomic for longer key inputs. They're mainly advertised for crypto purposes, but at least Ledger's implementation seems decent and is usable for e.g. SSH keys and OpenPGP as well. It does the job if you only very rarely import keys, though – and in modern (asymmetric cryptography based) systems, you ideally import exactly one secret key and do the rest with public/private key cryptography derived from it, rather than having to do the tamper-evident envelope shenanigans with every partner you share keys with.

EvanAnderson 4y ago
The device that comes closest to what I'd like is the NitroKey HSM (and the underlying SmartCard-HSM applet it's based on). It doesn't have any secure PIN pad option that I'm aware of, though. Buying a random USB keyboard from an office supply store would be good enough for me. The tamper-evident envelope thing was for CA root keys for a DRM system to 'protect' embedded device firmware (read: revenue model) that we implemented for a Customer. The product line has a 25 year field service life. It was a requirement to be able to issue new intermediate CA certs for that period. We met with a couple large HSM vendors and decided the lock-in risk with the proprietary HSM platforms was too great. Instead we opted for a key generation and HSM commissioning ceremony modeled after the DNSSEC root key signing ceremony. It was the best way we could come up with to have the key material available for loading onto other HSMs down-the-road. I guess it turned out to be good idea (so far). I heard the Customer switched HSM in the last couple years.