I usually use Age, I’d like to hear your opinions.
My volumes are PLAIN dm-crypt encrypted (i.e. LUKS without the LUKS bells and whistles) and the key is stored on my Vivokey Flex implant.
I mount them using scripts that combine crypsetup and vivokey_pam, with the ubiquitous ACR122U RFID reader: the systemd service file calls my script, I present my implant to the reader and voila: the volume is mounted.
Geez this guy secures. Impressive
Can you tell us more about the implant? Is it painful to install? Is it uncomfortable to wear? Where do have it? What other things is it useful for?
Is it painful to install?
Honestly, yes. It’s not fun when someone slices your skin open and then lifts your skin to create a pocket, even with lidocaine injections. But usually it’s 10 teeth-gnashing minutes and then it’s over.
That’s for big planar implants of course. The smaller ones are glass tubes the size of a grain of rice and injected under the skin, exactly like chipping a pet. It’s 10 seconds and then it’s done. But those glass implants have reduced performances, especially for things like doing cryptography on the chip, which requires more power.
Is it uncomfortable to wear?
No. I’ve had mine for years and I honestly only remember they’re there when I touch them.
Where do have it?
My Flex is in my right wrist. I have other implants (11 in total) in other locations. Mostly in my hands.
What other things is it useful for?
The Flex is used for cryptographic purposes (TOTP and computing hashes, the main purpose of the latter being those encrypted volumes). It’s also used as a token to unlock my banking app on my phone.
All my implants are used for many things. I guess the best way to show them to you is to point you to this post I wrote a year and a half ago, in which I gathered all the videos I made to show their use in one post.
While I find your implants path very interesting, impressive and Cyberpunk worthy, I would’t use any externally accessible keys / fobs / etc myself. I wouldn’t want someone to unlock my stuff while I’m sleeping. Same reason I avoid face detection unlock. My mind is the best safe out there, I can memorize a very lengthy passphrase and have no problems typing it.
It’s not very likely, unless you’re a heavy sleeper who happens to sleep in unsafe places regularly - or your partner at home is up to no good.
Also, implants are kind of finicky with respect to reader placement, because they’re sitting under a layer of skin full of conductive water, and they’re usually not symmetrical, so the reader has to be positioned a certain way to score a good read. You as the implant owner know “the move” (in fact, it quickly becomes second nature and you never think about it anymore) but unless you explain it to someone or they know about this shortcoming, they’ll have a hard time getting a read. That’s assuming you don’t wake up because someone is touching you, because the read range is very short - like 1/4" when the reader is ideally placed - and you don’t hear the loud bing from the cellphone.
But yeah, you’re correct: strictly speaking, if you have a good memory, a long and complicated password - or a mental “recipe” to make one - and a healthy habit of changing passwords regularly is better. Or better: a password in your head and an implant as a second factor.
This is seriously impressive.
Did you use to post on Reddit? This is not the first time I’ve ran across DangerousThings and I think the first time around might have been caused by you lolI post on Reddit infrequently. It’s not a very nice place to be. I might have posted something about my implants there in the past but I doubt it: I tend to avoid mentioning them on there because it invariably attract unwanted comments from religious nutcases.
You may have read something another implantee has posted. I’m far from the only one out there :)
I’ve used VeraCrypt successfully to encrypt volumes/folders.
It’s worked great for me, although I recently started encountering issues accessing files but it seems the problem is with my external and not with the encryption method. Hopefully I can recover those files someday. Backup your backups and then backup again.
I use LUKS-encrypted LVM volumes to store everything (and transfer via SSH or HTTPS), but would use GPG if I needed to encrypt individual files.
And
tar | gpg
is handy if you want more than a few files encrypted for transport.
LUKS